So I haven’t been posting lately, on either Facebook or on my blog. In recent weeks, my Twitter posting has started to pick up again, but even on Twitter (my social media safe space, believe it or not) I was absolutely silent for several weeks.

I just didn’t have anything to say.

Nothing I read particularly inspired me to write or respond.

I suppose it was just a general numbness.

You see on the 20th of March, 2017, my Dad died.

He had lived with incurable bone cancer for more than 8 years, out-living every life expectancy prediction of experts and pretty much everyone else. Though nothing can take away the pain of loss, knowing that he lived his life well and kept his sense of humour in the face of pain and his diagnosis allows me to smile.

Though he had been sick for a long time, he had never let a terminal diagnosis stop him from doing what he loved. He accepted every medication recommended and dealt with every side-affect so that he could continue to not just live, but live with at least some quality of life as long as he could.

Even in the last weeks before he was forced to enter hospital, despite the increased pain he knew it would cause, Dad had gone out into his beloved vegetable garden as much as he could to nurture his vegetable plants and enjoy the plants and the birds in his backyard.

He lived his life as much as he could every day until his last.

For around a month before he died, he had been in hospital, unable to stand by himself or walk and yet finding the strength to believe that he would be able to learn to walk again and be able to see his home again.

As always, he was a force of nature in everything he did, but in the end, the last time he saw his home was as he was leaving it in an ambulance.

Just as he would never again see his home, which he built with his own hands, so too we will never again see him.

I miss him so much.

Grief manifested in me by taking away the excitement & interest I had in many things which had always been my refuge. Since Dad went into hospital back in February, my writing has been basically at a stand-still, my attention span (as well as my temper) short.

It’s only been in the past week or so that I’ve started to re-engage. Even then, I have had to force myself.

But I am back into it. I will keep doing more each day and eventually I will hopefully find my way back into full swing.

I felt I should say something about my complete absence. I suppose this is the sort of thing professional bloggers set up schedules to compensate for.

Take care everyone, I’ll be posting again soon.

— Is