You're four, mate. What a long journey we've been on thus far, eh? Feels like it, anyway. As I type this, you and Mum are playing with your new toys in the kitchen, the sounds of your voices drifting up from below. It's been a big couple of weeks, all told. You are now a dummy-free zone - we're five days into the biggest change in your world since... continence? - and you seem ok about it all, apart from being a bit nazzy at bedtime. But who's not a bit on the nazz at lights out?
Other than that, you're still convinced you're a girl (you insist on being referred to as 'she' and 'her' when you're tired. You're also having a bit of an obsessive crush on Mummy, have taken to calling Grandad 'Daddy' by mistake - despite me being a foot away - and Mum, you and your grandmother seem to be oblivious to my presence quite a lot. They're just obsessed with you, and you're obsessed with yourself and them, I suppose. I'm ok, though. Let the record show that I'm still around, doing fine, and living my life.
You're also a confident little bike-rider (stabilisers on) and enjoying your new-found turn of speed no end. I'm actually a bit jealous of all your new toys and might get myself a little something for fun too :)
Work is fine, not that you should care about that. It matters to you because it pays for things, and the way things are going, I think we might buy a big toy for the family soon. Maybe a new bike for me? I don't know if I can even ride a bike; it's been a while. Might risk it for a biscuit and find out.
Some other things have happened, too.
I met Joanna Osborne when Lucy started at Arnewood. From my memory, they were instant friends, and she was around our house regularly. I always thought she was lovely. Friendly, confident, funny, clever, pretty. I also thought she might be hitting on me when she came round. That was nice. I liked her, and despite confirming that she fancied me for ages in 2000, I never did anything about it. I couldn't see us together, as great as she was.
When Lucy became ill, Jo was a regular visitor, and she's one of those I can never be very far from. She's always been there, on the warm, friendly, not-entirely-platonic-but-probably-platonic fringes of my life, like other Jos, Joannas and Joannes I can think of. My friend Joe asked Lucy if Jo fancied me once. 'Oh, she fucking loves him, always has,' said Lucy at Oasis in 2000. I knew that then, and I did nothing. I liked Jo where she was. Change the status of that relationship, and you change that relationship forever. Making the imagined actual reality is not always a good plan. We all exist on an elevated plane in people's minds, if we exist there at all. On the whole, though, people don't sit around thinking about you as much as you imagine they do. I've been in this position before, and trust me, you tread carefully.
When I got ill, there she was again. She had breast cancer herself by then, and was battling away. She was a tremendous person, so full of life and light and bubbles and positivity.
Late last year she went into a hospice for some palliative chemo, and ended up being in and out of there on rotation, as her health stabilised, then declined, then stabilised, then declined. The cycle that is cancer taking over began, quietly, just like it did with my mum and Lucy.
Jo called me on my birthday, from the same hospice Lucy and my mum died in, saying she'd been talking to the nurses there who had treated both, and remembered them fondly.
Her voice cracked slightly when she mentioned you. She knew she didn't have long, and so did I. I couldn't muster the right words to reply properly, much less in the more immediate voice-message form she'd used. I prevaricated. I didn't reply.So Jo died last week. Married with two beautiful daughters, one of whom carries Lucy on in the world as her middle name. Jo had been ill for several years, with cancer that got more and more invasive.
Then a few days later, her sister Nicky Whatsapped me. Jo had died at Oakhaven, holding a picture of your Auntie, and joined my Mum and everyone else over the bridge still holding it.
In that context, then, today has been joyous, because you're four, and I'm lucky to have been here to help you celebrate that and all of your other achievements. Sometimes I feel like I'm the ghost at the feast: left to hover in the doorway while you, your grandparents and Mummy played on the floor of the kitchen with your backs to me, I felt ostracised. I said: 'Sometimes I don't think anyone in this family is listening to me.' 'Say something interesting, then', said your Mum. I don't think that was fair. I've loved all of your birthdays, but maybe I'm not as attentive as I was. Maybe I don't read the room very well. Maybe, just maybe, I'm fed up of having to read the room.
If I can't make myself heard over the noise, if my opinions don't matter to anyone else, if my health is taken-as-read, if my presence is relegated to a nice-to-have more often than not, and if my contribution to life isn't required, I find myself wondering why I should try.
But what alternative do I have? I have a few options, shall we say, and I'm reminded of them when I'm spat at. I'm reminded of them when getting out of the house takes two hours and a row. I'm reminded of them when I'm asked/told to 'leave the family', which has happened six times in the last year. I'm also the one with the terminal illness, the variable moods and the death sentence everyone else can't be bothered to worry about any more. I'm the one who four years ago was given a year to live, who now has a job and is planning to spend all (yeah, ALL) of that money on his family, so that we have a lovely time. No other fucker is up for this task.
Those that turn their backs on me, that snort, bemused, at the idea of a standing fit versus a falling fit but are too lazy to research my condition; those that studiously avoid talking about anything but the distant past and think nothing of asking for money to pay their mortgages off as soon as they find out I've got cash, while not contributing a fucking penny to their own daughter's wedding? They can watch it all get fucking spent on crisps, for all I care.
The real amusement for me is the fact that our bravery, our loss, our good sense and our planning will actually end up putting a roof over their thick heads, will pay for their EoL care and funerals, I'd wager, and then put food in the mouth and shelter over the empty head of their useless other daughter, too. So generous is Tams, and so lazy and profligate they are, I can't believe anything else can happen.
Pop Quiz: If you have a dog, and you go on holiday, do you (a) pay £50 for a kennel cough jab every year and then pay for kennels when you go away, or (b) 'save' the money on kennel cough jabs by never paying for them and, by extension, never kennelling your dog, thus never travelling at all?
If the answer is (b), newsflash: you're a fucking idiot.
