Walking up the hill to Mums house.
Like somebody else has said, or will say according to which way you read these, there's a few stories i could tell, but for the time being here's just the one.

Back in the year 2000 I was living in Manchester, renting a house just around the corner from my ex and our kids, having a few problems with her, and not long having "recovered" from bad depression.

My brother rang me to ask me to visit our parents, my mum had been in bed for a couple of days supposedly with a wonky hip that she should have been getting fixed earlier in the year. (Being in love with my dad, who'd had a couple of heart attacks, she refused to leave him while she even got examined properly.)
Since he was half a mile from them, and me twenty miles (and don't drive) I said I'd go the next day.
He insisted I visit, even saying he'd pick me up. I'd just finished work, was knackered but something made me say ok.
I had time to get home and get changed before he arrived, and we picked up chips on the way there.
As soon as I saw my mum I told him to phone for an ambulance. The best way to describe her? My mum was a bbw, think an older version of Dawn French, and her belly as she lay there looked like a deflating water bomb.
The ambulance arrived, they got her in and I went with them. As soon as we got to hospital they whisked her off for tests.
My brother turned up with Dad a while later, it had taken Dad about an hour to get his clothes changed.
Then a surgeon appeared and took me and my brother to one side.
The problem with her hip, that both her usual doctor and a locum had said was her age and weight, was actually a blockage in her bowel that had swelled with everything she ate and was currently football size. They wanted to operate immediatly, but warned that it may not be good as her bowel lining was stretched so thin it could rip at any moment.
Whats the choice?
They operated, but it ripped.
She was immediatly put on high doses of antibiotics to try to prevent the fecal matter causing infections.
She never regained consciousness, and four days later died.

The last time I cried was ringing my ex in the rain in the hospital car park.

I left my job, I moved out of my rented house, and I moved in to look after my dad.
Together with my brother we planned her funeral, and dealt with life going on.

Or at least my brother and I did.

My dad basically gave up.

Five weeks later I call the doctor for him. He's got all the signs of pneumonia, and the ambulance comes for him.

SEVEN FUCKING HOURS WE SAT IN CASUALTY!!!

My dads getting weaker by the moment, we'd been promised by the doctor we were an emergency, and when someone does bother to check us (because I've told him my Dads about to collapse) he says "Why did nobody tell us earlier?" and he's off into a real bed in a ward. It's 11 pm when my brother and I leave him.

At 2 am my brother rings, Dads had another heart attack but they've managed to revive him. He'll pick me up on the way to the hospital.

In the car, for no obviously apparent reason, its 02:30 so not much traffic, my brother cuts through a road that we used to walk up to visit my gran (my mums mum) and my dad is walking up the hill ahead of us. Not the almost skeletal bloke we'd left at the hospital, but the fit rugby playing guy who'd woo'ed and won our mum.
"You might as well slow down, our kid. Dad's gone."
"WTF?"
"I've just seen him walking to West Street."
Now there's no-one there.

Doesn't slow down much, but when we get to the hospital we are too late.
He'd had yet another heart attack, and this time he'd managed to go.

Time moves on, its about 2 yrs later. and I'm camping at a pagan camp with my now wife and the people she's been going to camp with for years.
There's a man showing us Tibetan singing bowls, and then he and his 'group' start to use them, and some subtle drums, to play a really relaxing piece of music.
I just sit back and relax.
I realise I'm watching doors opening and I'm going through them, one after the other, and then suddenly one opens in the top corner of my grans living room and I'm watching her and my parents talking in front of her old fashioned range.
My mother looks up into the corner, links arms with my dad, they both smile really wide relaxed smiles, and as I want to move towards them I'm moving back through all these doors until I'm back on the cushions of the dome and the bowls are finishing chiming.

I suppose I should have felt cheated, that I should have been able to interact with them, but I was just ecstatic at what I saw as the message that wherever they are they are happy together.

(Before anyone suggests that the use of artificial stimulants was involved, if you check previous posts you'll find that they don't work for me so I don't take them.)

Even now, six or so yrs on, if I'm feeling particularly down, the memory of those smiles can restore my mood.
(paof2 Nude might not be rude, but rude could be nude..., Thu 3 Jul 2008, 16:36, 1 reply)

*Clicky*
What a sad but also lovely story. What a tragedy to lose them both like that. But I'm glad you've found some peace with it. *Hug*
( El Lazarus is calm now, Ish,, Thu 3 Jul 2008, 19:07, closed)