I awoke with a start to a very vivid and somewhat disturbing nightmare. It’s rare that I recall what I dream about, actually very rare and that this was so vivid tonight. And after waking it took me a few seconds to adjust to the fact I’m in a strange hotel room, it’s past midnight local time and  I’m on the second day-is-the–worst jet lag. It was quite the start and 20 minutes later as I post what I’ve just written my heart is still racing.

OK, onto something else, last night over dinner a couple of us were discussing going home to the place of our childhood and how we act. When I head home to Guildford it gets a little scary how far back into childhood I can regress, and perhaps more importantly how quickly I regress.

It’s not nearly as bad as it used to be when mum was around, there are no “You should not be…” conversations, I’ve had them about rallying, motorcycles, how regular I am, going out in the cold with wet hair, people I’m dating (or with one infamous conversation about who I’m married too, I’ll share one day), dental health, cats, where I live, doctors visits and going mountain biking on a Sunday morning. These were all conversations I had in my 30’s and briefly before she passed my 40’s too.

And they usually end with “Da Vid, I just want you to be happy…” I miss mum every day.

I’ve said before about how my parents were always about 40 in my mind. Dad has a full head of dark hair, youthful broad shoulders and so on.  Every time I arrive at Heathrow I want to ask this old man that’s come to get me where dad is.  I never do because as soon as I see him I start revert back to the role of being his child. It’s very strange.

It only takes a couple of moments and I’m over the surprise of being greeted by a man in his 70’s rather than the father who used to throw me over his shoulder (try that today and we’ll see just how good that hernia surgery really was).

My friend Min thinks he has about the sexiest accent ever, thick Scottish gracefully diluted by over 50 years in England. She once described him as “Sean Connery, but sexier”, I still don’t think he knows how to react to a woman close to 40 years his junior hitting on him.

The flip side of me seeing my parents as 40 year olds, is they still saw me as a 8 year old some times.  While time passes the roles we each see ourselves in have not changed in quite the same way, it’s a nice excuse for me and my brother to be immature and make fart jokes over at the dinner table and, I’m rather OK for that.

There has been some changes and revisions to the tried and tested Father-Son relationship, there is a certain amount of denial on my part (and my brothers) about how old I am, and therefore how old he is. This is a denial that’s easier to keep going when I’m in England, it’s not like I get my washing done and all my meals cooked, but I do have way fewer responsibilities when I’m there. Typically there is something that needs doing, minor jobs like laying some vinyl floor or trying to open up a slow draining sink, but even then I’ll be told dad will get round to taking care of it, but some how I’ll take care of it when I’m there.

I think with mum this regression went even further. Despite that fact that both my brother and I are only a couple of years apart and he has a wonderful daughter and awesome wife, while I don’t. Mum still expected me to be the boring, sensible one out of the pair.

While my brother has not exactly used the license that mum gave him to rave it up over the last decade or so. But I don’t think mum would have shown much surprise at Stephen coming home from a party at dawn, while I would get the Spanish inquisition for getting in 20 minutes late from the pub. Growing up my brother was the wildest one of the pair of us, but that’s fairly relative. I was the boring Dungeons and Dragons player on a Saturday night, while he went to the roller disco and stayed out all late.

OK, I admit that “roller disco” does not exactly bring up images of all night raves and dropping piles of ecstasy, but this is Guildford in commuter belt Surrey we are talking about.

It’s relative, my brother had one or two parties at the house when my parents were away, but that was about it. We were both pretty good and did not give my parents much strife. However mum always said he caused them far worry than I did growing up, but I took over later in life.

I think it was my racing was the one that scared here the most. She knew a couple of my friends that died racing and never understood why I would ever do something like that. She once said “I’d expect Stephen to do that, but not you”, I asked why that was and she never really answered clearly. There was something about me being the sensible one, but she never elaborated on that.

I got an interesting e-mail a couple of weeks ago, I’ve been sitting on it deciding what to do. It seems one of the rumours my ex is putting around is that she now believes I never went through Hodgkin’s Lyphoma. As with other accusations she has made, either first hand or by proxy, she has seen much evidence to the contrary, but it does not fit her argument and so is discarded.

First I’ve never been so upset at an accusation, she wants a fight and has reverted to type in clearly wanting to be right. Being right is so important that she is happy to discard conversations and other evidence that did not fit into her hypothesis.

She has been part of conversations between my parents and myself about how I felt. She has listened to my mother and I argue and get emotional about her not being able to deal with it. She was there when dad described his reaction and how he coped.

Then there was the conversation with a close friend about how my ex-wife sat in her car crying and stated that she could not handle it if anything was wrong with me just before she left for Colorado. Yet my ex-wife denied any such moment, as my lawyer put it, she is my ex for a reason.

There were whole conversations over martinis about what happened when my close friend took me to chemo appointments. We talked about my reactions to the drugs, we discussed how I was afterwards, the tuna sandwiches and cleaning up after me. But none of these conversations fit into her argument, so they must be discarded rather than her argument is invalidated. These are not imagined discussions, these were talks that happened while she was sitting there.

Then there is what she saw, she saw how over the first year we knew each other she even commented on how much more often I needed to shave compared to when we first met.

None of these points fit into her argument, so instead of maybe modifying her argument she decided to discard the parts that don’t fit and be right. One thing I learned years ago about my ex is she needs to be right, and if not right then less wrong that the other party.

I’ve found four or five incidences where I believe that first hand evidence has been discarded in order to validate her point of view.

However, back to the HL, here was so much first hand and primary evidence that she decided to ignore it’s rather pathetic and as she feels the need to play this out in public I feel justified in responding. This is just one example of the lengths she will go too in order to be right, at least in her own mind.

I’m not realistic enough to expect her to admit to being wrong) she has discarded them to validate herself. This is a woman who perjured herself during her previous divorce. She was determined to go to court in that case, what I now understand is an almost delusion sense of right, she lied about the repayment terms of $5000. She claimed in court that it was a gift, when in reality it was a loan and she knew that.

As for my first hand evidence of the perjury accusation, she told me. She said at the time she knew it was a lie and she was under oath. Should anyone be interested I’m happy to supply the case number, everything I’ve had to say about the perjury is public record.

By the way, court did not go well for her that time…

Once again, unlike the anonymous posters out there, I stand by everything I’ve said here. It seems playing this out in public is what she wants.

It comes on at strange unexpected moments. Today was sitting on the airplane reading a proper semi-business related grown up book (with only a few pictures) about the growth of the organization behind the London marathon of all random things.

But when it happens I just can’t help myself. I’ve been told it’s normal, but the things that set it off are so small and random some times.

This time was a throwaway line about a hand written signs seen along the marathon route one year. My emotions get the better of me and I feel myself getting rather teary eyed. I’m stressed, tired and on days like this it does not take much, but I know it’s a natural and indeed healthy way of dealing with things.

One thing I’ve learned over the last year or so is that all deal with loss differently. I miss you mum.

It’s July 4^th 2008, it was a Friday and I’ve been invited to a barbeque at the friends house, I am looking forward to relaxing and being around a group of fun people. It’s just before lunch and I’m finishing off a little work e-mail. I even remember the email I was replying too, it was about having people available to receive and inspect some parts going onto an aircraft I was responsible for.

It’s strange which details stay with you.

My cell goes off, the number is my parent’s home phone in England. I remember speaking to them the day before about my plans for the holiday weekend, having fun and perhaps staying overnight with friends.

It’s dad, in typical style he comes straight out with it, Granddad’s ill and I need to be there. This comes totally out of the blue, he was in his mid 80’s, had bad knees, had trouble getting around for a few years now, but no one had mentioned him being ill before now.

I never got much of an explanation over the phone other than it’s serious. I knew that, I’d not be getting the call if it were not.

Henry Darrah, 1942

I briefly spoke to dad once more that afternoon just to let him know I was that evening’s British Airways flight to London. Dad picked me up at Heathrow and it’s now Saturday afternoon in London.

In the car I got my parents version of the story. Granddad was diagnosed with leukaemia a couple of months previously, and in typical Henry Darrah fashion kept it quiet. As I’ve said before he was a powerful man, who was determined to live his life with ethics, determinations and grace, and on his terms.

My parents had known for about a week, he’d underplayed the seriousness and did not want me jumping on the next airplane to be there. He’s never liked people making a fuss of him.

I’d last seen him three months earlier when I’d gone over for what was in reality not much more than a long weekend. His house was usually the first stop after leaving the airport, typically on the way to the old peoples house.

This time we by passed his house and went straight to the Royal Surrey County Hospital. No one has told him I’m on my way; dad lets me know about this particular nugget as we are waiting for the lift to take us up to his ward.

We walk in and he’s in bed on his side as he’s got bedsores. The hospital had been giving him a series of blood transfusions over the previous couple of days and his arm has a number of big bruises. He’s obviously surprised to see me, and immediately asks what I’m doing there, I mumble something about a planned trip and dad decides he needs a cup of tea and leaves us alone.

As we always do I shake his hand, only this time I’m met by a wince of pain and the usually strong handshake is not there. That’s when I understand it’s more serious than anyone is letting on. He’s always had such a strong grip and this time there is nothing there, he’s ill, and he’s not told at least my parents how ill he is.

After a while Geraldine and my aunt show up, first thing he asks his wife was did she know I was coming. Geraldine says yes she did, gave him a look and it was left at that, at least while I was still in the room.

Geraldine and my grandfather married the year I moved to the Seattle. They had been living together for a few years before that. I saw from the start that Geraldine made my grandfather very happy, and his happiness was what I cared about. It took mum a few years to accept her, but she saw that her dad was happy and ultimately that’s what mattered.

Mum had commented a few times that one of the strangest things she had done was watch her dad get married. I think it was uncomfortable for her that he was making it so clear that he had moved on from my grandmother’s death 16 years earlier. Mum came round, like the rest of us we saw granddad was happy and that what we all, including mum, wanted.

My Grandparents 1977 or 78

That evening I visited granddad again, for an hour or so it’s just the two of us. He spent a lot of time talking about the past, telling stories, not something he does very often. My brother joined us after a while. Granddad spent almost three hours that evening sharing with Stephen and I. He reminisced about growing up in Canada, learning to drive as a 12 year old, going to Montreal, watching La Habs play at the Forum, moving to England, what mum did as a child and so on.

We talked about growing up; rides in his cars, given candy over my parent’s objections and all the wonderful things grandparents do for grandkids.

I saw him every day for the next five days. I said good-bye to granddad on my way to the airport; I was going to be back in a couple of weeks and said I’d see him then.

He passed before I could make it back to see him.

There is a lot more to this story, how mum did not want to worry me, how Geraldine threatened to call me herself if mum did not do it, how my grandfathers family came together to celebrate the man. How his ashes are in a vault next to my grandmother.

Two years on my aunt and his wife Geraldine still live in the same house, and it still does not feel right to walk into that house and not see Henry struggling to get out of his chair to greet me. I’ve only been in the living room a couple of times since he passed, it feels so strange after so many years of granddad always being in his chair when I arrived.