Tag Archives: family

Personal

Five Years, Five Months On

Leave a comment

Well, it’s been a year. Or 13 months, to be more accurate. I kept meaning to write, but every time I did, I would look out at the world around me and feel that my words, whatever they were, would be inconsequential and inadequate to the moment. And it’s not like things have been getting better, has it? Everywhere, from every front, the walls seem to be closing in.

I wish I had a more cheerful way to start this post. For me at least, things aren’t too bad. I’m still employed, I’m still as healthy as I was at the time of my last post (plus a couple of stone lighter, for reasons I may get into later), and I’ve even started travelling properly again, slowly filling out that map of Europe to the point where one more trip should more or less finish it. Even so, with the moral void of Trump on one side and the utter absence of guiding principles of Starmer on the other, it’s been a little uncomfortable to be viewing the world from Ireland in the past year. Layer on top of that the continued disgrace to the world that is the treatment of Gaza and the feeling that the still-there threat of global environmental collapse has gone onto the back burner, and it’s not a recipe for a settled state of mind.

So, the world around me is not supportive of optimism right now. When I started writing this (early, to give a bit of time for editing) I was sitting at home with my mum, at the beginning of an Easter weekend when I was hoping to get to see all the members of my family, one week shy of the five-years anniversary of dad’s passing, almost five and a half years into my own treatment for a cancer that ten years ago almost certainly would have killed me by now … well, there are still good things in the world. Good people are everywhere, and the ties that bind are also the ties that hold us up when things get hard.

A selfie of the author, a smiling man with a short grey beard and a baseball cap. Behind him is a sandy beach stretching to the horizon, where it meets a blue, cloud-speckled sky.
Out on the shore, trying to run.

To start at the beginning then, home is home. I’ve lived in Dublin more than half my life, but the eastern end of Dundrum Bay, the southeast corner of Lecale, is and always will be where I’m from. I didn’t get a car until around two decades after I moved away, but now that I have one, it’s easier by far to get back for the weekend. There’s powerful healing in being around one’s loved ones, to be by the sea and shore, to sit in familiar seats and let the day fade over the evening without needing to turn the lights on. I bring friends here when I can, because it’s something of value I have that deserves sharing. And I lose nothing in the sharing of it.

Mum remains the heart of the family, as always. A steady presence, even when pulled one way and the other by the need to help out with grandkids, whether it’s homework, lifts to and from home, and impromptu meals. I’ve never been the best at saying “I love you,” so I started to say it at the end of every video call to mum and dad a few years back. I still keep that habit. It’s worth saying it, even if it’s a known thing. Hearing it can be even more important.

Easter’s an odd time, of course. I stepped away from the Catholic Church almost as soon as I hit Dublin, and from religion in general some years after. Not angrily, though some of the causes for that departure were causes for anger too. Over time, I found my balance. Religion provides something for some that it never did for me. The why of it, I never succeeded in dissecting, and I’m not sure of the benefit had I managed it. I listened and learned and built myself an outlook that works for me, and I hope for those around me too. All those nieces and nephews are part of the school system up here, of course, so they’ll go through the same rituals I did. Who knows where they’ll end up?

I still miss dad, of course. I wanted to do something to mark his fifth anniversary, but there’s reluctance to pull people out of the new shape of their lives when so much time has passed. Wakes are for the immediate moment of grief, a gathering of the living around the sudden absence in their lives. These days, the absence is there, but it’s not a gaping hole, it’s a green patch of good memories and faded regrets. I’ll visit his grave at some point over the weekend, stare out over the bay and tell him how I’ve been and what the news is. What I miss is talking to him, but I can still fill in my half of the conversation.

A view down a country path, which is made a tunnel by the gorse bushes that stretch over it from both sides, covered in yellow flowers.
Would you believe me if I said there was a stone circle at the end of this? Probably.

As for myself and my health, that remains, as I said, as positive as could be hoped. Last year I’d had a bit of a thyroid downturn, but things seem to have balanced out now, with my new array of pills and dosages keeping me on an even keel. My doctor’s visits have crept out to six weeks, and I’ve even tried running a few times (laziness is a factor here). As mentioned, I have succeeded in losing a chunk of weight, which has a lot to do with feeling better about myself and was a direct result of being told I was on the verge of diabetes given how much sweet stuff I was cramming in every day. So—sugary foods minimised, and as a result, the pounds fell off. Who knew it was so easy?

Truth be told, I’d let my health and fitness drift a bit, after the dual blows of cancer and Covid lockdowns. Hermitry isn’t an aid to a healthy life. I’m clawing it back inch by inch, still hoping to hang around long enough to avail of an eventual miracle cure. That’s assuming Trump doesn’t shut down all the research labs or sell them off to Elon to research hair replacement medications. I mean, I could do with that too, but I know where my priorities lie.

The corner of a building in Split, Croatia, with painted decorations in the form of a coin and scroll that tell the story of Julius Nepos.
Not Diocletian, but his less august successor, Julius Nepos, the last surviving emperor of the Roman west.

Anyway, having ensured that this post will get picked up by some lowly spook somewhere, I may have come to the end of things I wanted to say. I would promise to write more often, but without looking I’m pretty sure I made that promise last time, and look how that turned out.

Oh! There is one last thing to talk about. Travel! More specifically, the two trips I’ve been on since I last wrote. Actually, I tell a lie, it’s three: thirteen months, after all. I meant to post proper descriptions up to the travel section of this site, and I still do, but in the interim some brief descriptions.

A night sky, with the Mourne Mountains on the horizon, silhouetted by an auroral curtain.
Oh, and I got to see the aurora borealis. Forgot to mention that.

Trip one, in March 2024, was to a city, a state, a site, and whatever else came after. More specifically, Barcelona, Andorra, Carcassonne, and Marseilles. It was the first proper trip I’d been on post-Covid and post-cancer, and I was a bit wary. It wasn’t easy at times, especially given my thyroid-affected tendency to sweat way too much when exerting myself (and being a bit overweight at the time) but it was hugely freeing. Barcelona was a pleasure to wander around, Andorra a fascinating oddity (with an excellent city centre spa), Carcassonne every bit as impressive as its reputation, and Marseilles a character-filled coda to a trip that outdid my expectations.

Trip two, in September 2024, was occasioned by a wedding. My cousin getting married in a Tuscan villa, and myself with an invite (mum was supposed to come but was unwell and unable to travel). The wedding was a delight, and I span the trip out into nearly two weeks of travelling: to Venice via a few hours in Florence, a day in Padua, a few days in Trieste, then over the hills into Slovenia and lovely Ljubljana, and from there into Croatia, for stays in both Zagreb and Split. The latter was a particular highlight, the centre of town being built in and around the remnants of the palace of Diocletian, one of the more storied Roman emperors. I splashed out a little more cash than usual and made sure my hotel was in the walls of that palace. In fact, if I may offer a little advice, if you’re doing a city-hopping trip like those I favour, it’s a good idea to save a little spending money to make the last stop more plush, so that you return home rested, refreshed, and positive. It seems to work for me anyhow.

A view of the citadel of Carcassonne at night, the medieval walls lit up with orange light.
Carcassonne by night. Because by day is not enough.

This year’s trip, again in March, was one of the two trips left to mainland European countries I haven’t visited. (Ukraine and Belarus being out of reach for the moment.) In this case, it was a tour of the Baltic states and Finland, which I dubbed a “Last Chance to See” tour in a moment of black humour. I started off in Helsinki, still in the grips of the fading chill of winter but with a population already dreaming of summer and willing to take any opportunity to stroll in the sun. Across the Gulf of Finland lies Tallinn, a return visit from more than a decade before, where I had a lot of fun wandering around one of Europe’s most intact medieval cities. After that it was railways all the way, first to Riga by the banks of the Daugava River, where wandering through Soviet-era architecture brought me to a trio of museums: a rickety collection of fire engines and fire brigade memorabilia, a paean to a brand of chocolates that once delighted the children of the USSR, and a tour through the cells and depravities of the KGB’s effort to keep the people of Riga down. Last of all was Vilnius, where I roamed forested hills, independent districts, and restored palaces as I learned about the history of Lithuania and the determination of its people not to lose their identity.

If you’re still here, thank you for allowing me to ramble on about my trips. Getting to venture out and see more of the world has been one of the big wins of the modern era of technological advancement and no wars between major powers. For me, Covid and cancer conspired to take it away for a few years, but the past 13 months have given it back. So that’s a victory I don’t take lightly. I hope to get back to writing properly again too, so that’s a task for the next 13 months. Will see you there, with any luck.

Personal, Sport

Odd Shaped Balls 2023

Leave a comment

So we’re onto the new edition of the Rugby World Cup. This is not an inconsequential thing, rugby being the only form of sportsball that I follow with any real attention (golf doesn’t count, not being an actual sport). It’s also a marker of the times, given that World Cups come around in four-year cycles. The last edition was thus happening at around this time in 2019, a very different world.

To speak of the local team, Ireland are coming in as one of the favourites once more. Last time, under the stewardship of Joe Schmidt, they were a little past their best, their time as world number one a distant memory, other teams having figured out Schmidt’s meticulously drawn playbook. Ireland were shocked by Japan in the group stages and mercilessly dispatched by New Zealand in the quarter finals.

This time around, Ireland look a more formidable package. Under Andy Farrell, they rebuilt towards retaking the number one spot, but this time they’ve defended it, against opposition clearly also building towards this tournament. It’s a misfortune of the draw (held, oddly, only a little after the last edition) that finds them in the same half as the three other favourites: New Zealand, hosts France, and champions South Africa, who are in Ireland’s group.

I’m watching Ireland’s first game as I’m writing this, and at this point they’ve just replied to a surprise early try by opponents Romania to the amount of three tries. Ireland remain an efficient machine, and I may get the chance to follow their progress beyond the quarter finals for the first time. If they can break that hoodoo, there’s every chance they’ll make it to the final.

It is, honestly, hard to remember the last edition of the Rugby World Cup. Held in Japan, I’d hoped to go to it but ended up on a eclipse-chasing journey to South America instead. My brother who did go to it posted to the family group this morning a picture of himself and his baby girl in matching Ireland tops. Four years ago: a different world.

We’ve had Covid and lockdowns in the interim, of course. The lunacy of Trump ended, or seemed to, and the U.K. government buried its head in the sand and screamed madness to the worms. For myself, I’ve had the ups and downs of cancer and a new job. And then of course, there’s dad.

I haven’t been to a rugby match since lockdown began. Before, I’d go to several a year, almost always with my dad. He had a grumpy appreciation of the ups and downs of sporting fortune that he passed down to his sons, and if I was the one who followed him in supporting West Brom (an even more lost cause), we all picked up a passion for Ulster and Irish rugby.

Just as Covid was first impinging on the public consciousness, Dad and I had planned a trip to Treviso in northern Italy for an Ulster away game. Northern Italy was, of course, where Covid started spreading first, and we decided it was safest not to risk it. Not long after, flights were being cancelled and lockdowns coming into place. It would have to wait.

Except it wouldn’t. Just over a month after lockdown began, I got a call from home. Dad had died suddenly in his sleep. The world was different. I made it up home for the funeral, but I had to head back to Dublin soon after. Then we all just tried to adjust and make it through the next few years.

They haven’t been bad years, in general. Quiet ones, of course, as the world got ever stranger and more perilous. There are two new babies in the family now, and there’s a wedding to look forward to later this month. Strange to be enjoying events like these without dad. Perhaps that’s what prompted this post.

I’ll keep watching the Rugby World Cup for the next month or so, of course. I’ll probably even go to a match at some point in the future. And I still plan to travel to Treviso some day and finish that interrupted plan.

It’s only half time in the match, after all, and Ireland are well ahead. Hope remains.

Health

One Year On

2 Comments

On December 3rd, 2019, I got my second cancer diagnosis. It wasn’t wholly unexpected by the time it arrived, but news like that still takes time to digest. You can read more about it here, if you want. My assumption at the time was that this would be the problem that I’d spend the next year navigating. That I would have to shape my life around it, one way or another.

2020 laughed at us all, didn’t it?

From the vantage point of twelve months later, cancer was just one of three major issues I ended up having to deal with. Of the three of them, it hasn’t been the hardest to get past, and it’s actually had the least impact on my day-to-day life. The others were, of course, the COVID-19 pandemic, which has upended and ended lives around the world, and the unexpected death of my father just as the pandemic was seriously getting started. Amid all of this, I can actually count myself a little lucky: as serious as my cancer is, it hasn’t been a massive burden to add to everything else 2020 has brought.

Yes, my cancer was and is serious. Lung cancer, stage 4, not curable. I have regular checkups and slightly less regular scans to monitor its progress. My running career has come to a grinding halt, and I can still feel the cancer’s presence with every deep breath or truncated moment of exertion. But I had a lucky break: a mutation in the cancer gene meant I was suitable for a pill-based therapy. Four pills, morning and evening. Minimal side effects and no need to be plugged into a saline drip for hours at a time, or have bits of me irradiated.

The result is that after being beaten back at first—allowing me to sleep more easily and largely eliminating my persistent cough—the cancer has been held in check for the rest of the year. The last few scans have been almost boring in their sameness, and my doctor and I have been enjoying informatively brief get-togethers for the past few months.

There have been hiccups, of course. Back around April and May, I found myself coughing up blood occasionally. No cause was ever found, despite a bronchoscope giving the medical profession yet another chance to poke around the inside of my lungs, but the fact that this coincided with the stress of my father’s funeral and the aftermath seems to offer a neat explanation. The pills have not been entirely without side effects either: a rash on my legs and a lowered heart rate that has seen me heading for my bed earlier than I might otherwise. (Typically I’m more of a morning person anyway, as several ex-girlfriends have bemoaned, so I’m not sure that many would notice any difference.)

Back when I was first diagnosed, I expressed some hope that I’d be able to spend some of 2020 travelling and writing. Prioritising things and people that matter to me. As it happened, none of that worked out. COVID-19 meant that international travel of any kind was off the menu, and the stress of living through a pandemic, family bereavement, and a cancer diagnosis turned out to be (surprise!) not conducive to the creative spark.

As the year has drawn to a close, I’ve started to get moving again, though the latest lockdown has kept travel far away. I did the 2020 NaNoWriMo challenge and hit the 50,000 word mark on time, giving me a boost of achievement that was sorely needed. Okay, so I didn’t actually finish the book I was working on, but I did at least prod my writing habit back into life. I’ve also kept up my walking in the face of worsening weather: work’s “Walktober” event probably helped with that.

Last of all there’s been Christmas. A strange, truncated Christmas that I managed to spend with my mum in the face of imminent lockdowns across the island of Ireland. A grab for normality as hopes for 2021 are born in the swirl of Brexit deals, vaccine arrivals, and the departure of at least one straw-haired headcase from the corridors of power.

For the past year, I’ve been appending these posts with a “Cancer Update.” Doing my bit to let people know how I’m getting on without broadcasting it on Facebook. With the end of the year, I think it’s time to retire that. As mentioned above, I’ve been enduring well enough through the year, with minimal side effects and struggles (cancer-related at least). While I’ll keep updating this blog, the “Cancer Update” will only reappear if there’s actual news to pass on. If it doesn’t appear, assume that things continue much as they have in the past year. Though I won’t take it amiss if you contact me to say hi and ask for a more detailed update.

So the time has come to crumple 2020 up and consign it to the dustbin of history. We’ll take our good memories where we have them and look to 2021 for a chance to improve things instead. I’ll continue to post irregularly, no doubt, and hopefully will have a chance to inspire some envy with travel posts before too long. After all, one advantage of cancer is getting bumped up the schedule for a vaccine shot…

Health, Personal, Writing

Morning Call

2 Comments

Early morning calls are rarely good news. When the call is from your brother, his voice freighting two words with loss and grief, it’s about as bad as it gets.

“It’s dad.”

The call came at 6.45 AM on Sunday. For a few hours, I ran on automatic, alternating between doing what I normally did and trying to figure out what to do next. Actually confronting the news would wait. Would have to wait. My family were a hundred miles away from me in the midst of a pandemic. Could I be with them? Through the morning, I narrowed in on that question, and by lunch I had an answer from my doctor: yes. A visit to the hospital and a Garda checkpoint later and I was heading north.

I arrived not long before the body came back. He’d died at 6.00 AM, and as always with these things, matters followed their own course. My parents were lucky enough to have most of their immediate family living close by, so my mum had support as what needed to be done was done. By the time I arrived, I was there to fill in a missing piece. To offer support and presence, and to help figure out what came next.

My big contribution that day was to provide a photo of him that people could use. He wasn’t the most comfortable photo subject — in most photos of him, his smile was thin, if there at all. Perhaps he’d just gotten used to the formality of the job he’d held as head teacher of a primary school for 40-odd years. I found a different one. One where he was laughing. One of him and me, as it happened. I cropped myself out of it and sent it on.

The original photo, with tart.

The photo came from a couple of years before. My mum had been ill, needing heart surgery and then a lengthy recovery in hospital. I was between jobs, so I decided to head north and stay with him for a few months. Despite the circumstances, I appreciated that time we had. I think I told him that. I hope I did. The photo was of the two of us attempting to bake an apple tart. Despite it being the middle of summer, we’d decorated it with the only pastry shapes we could find cutters for: Christmas trees. Maybe that’s what he was laughing at.

The tart turned out pretty well, in the end.

After the pressure of the first day, the next few were all waiting. We had time for realisation to sink in, as the body lay in repose in the house with us. Mum fielded condolences from her and dad’s expanse of family and friends. I did useful things, like cancelling his satellite TV subscription (awkward) and deleting his Facebook account (easy enough, as he’d never really posted much there).

The last missing piece arrived on Tuesday night. My brother flew in from Australia and arrived a little before midnight. Like me, he’d needed permission to travel through the pandemic, but his journey had been much longer and the prospects for his returning after were far more questionable.

The day of the funeral was … strange. I suppose it always must be, but then 2020 hasn’t been a normal year so far. The weather seemed to feel the strangeness. There was sunshine before and sunshine after, but during the funeral itself, there were two hours of squally, cold rain. Even so, the road between our house and the chapel was lined with people seeking to pay their respects. Not able to attend the funeral due to the pandemic, they did all that they could.

I helped carry the coffin to the grave. Helped lower it in, along with my brothers and uncles. Then we walked home again, through the easing rain. I found myself wanting to do everything I could but not knowing whether anything I did could make a difference. The funeral was over, and now the living without him had to begin.

It’s a huge gap to fill. Most people probably feel the same way about their parents, so please excuse me if I talk about him for a bit. I often tell people that I know that I’ve been pretty lucky in life. A strange thing to say, given my medical history, recent and otherwise, but my mum and dad are at the base of why I believe it.

He was born in Ardglass, County Down, a few years before World War II ended. Grew up there, made friends, got an education, saw a bit of the world, then came back. Got a job in a local school, became headmaster, got married, had four kids, retired, played golf. A life summed up in a paragraph; accurate but missing almost all of the important things.

His four kids are pretty different in temperament. We each took different things from our parents, but all of us learned from his curiosity, both about the world and the people in it. How to treat other people is the most important lesson that parents can teach, and he and mum aced that.

When I was young, I was constantly amazed at how many people would come up to him on the street and start chatting. As a shy kid, it was incredible that so many people knew him. Part of that was down to his job, which brought him into contact with so many. But mostly it was because he was interested in them, and they picked up on that. Not that he always remembered who they were on first meeting, but he never let on and usually figured it out quickly enough.

You could see that attention repaid in the crowds who braved rain, wind, and pandemic to line a narrow country road and see the coffin go by. You could see it in the generous tribute in the local paper, written by the father of several children he’d taught years before. The letters that crammed into our letterbox as the days went past after the funeral. He’d given out love into the world, and the world gave it back.

He loved sports, though for different reasons. Most of his sons picked up on his love for rugby and football, but I was the only one whom he snared into supporting his beloved West Bromwich Albion. He was a little more successful in passing on his contempt for Manchester United. He liked horse racing too, and golf, and he’d watch cricket as well, if only to see England lose.

He loved history, a love that kept my own love for it alive after school had done its best to bore it out of me. We’d planned to visit Venice and maybe other sites before the lockdown came in. He loved stories, both reading them himself and reading them out to his pupils. He’d have drained the local library dry of books if he could.

He loved quizzes more than almost anyone I knew, and they gave him an outlet for his curiosity and ability to retain odd scraps of information. It’s a love and a trait that I inherited too. He took part in several TV quizzes, most notably Mastermind, where his specialised subject was the Second Punic War. As a kid, I accidentally taped over his recording of that appearance. As an adult I retrieved a copy of it from the BBC archives.

Above all, he loved my mum. An ex-girlfriend of mine once turned to me after meeting my parents and said “They never argue!” or words to that effect. Which wasn’t exactly true. I imagine they were being on their best behaviour at the time, but the fact remains that they were together long enough to see several of their kids get married and have kids of their own, to build their own house in a beautiful part of the country, and to enjoy a retirement that saw them travel to various parts of the world both sunny and historical on a regular basis. If they argued, they loved and knew each other well enough to know that the arguments weren’t the important thing.

He wasn’t perfect. He could be a grumpy sod, especially when West Brom were being managed by Tony Pulis, the Irish rugby team were hoofing the ball into the air for no good reason, or Rory McIlroy was failing to putt properly. He had a tendency towards temper when driving that I’ve inherited as well. The world is full of idiots, and most of them are on the roads (a good proportion of them driving BMWs).

He never quite settled into retirement. His curiosity and need to be doing something wouldn’t let him. He churned through library books, wrote a book of his own, joined the local golf club and ran it for a while, volunteered to help out with charities and his old school, and did his best to fill his days. When his grandchildren came along, he loved them too, though they at last managed to remind him of the value of moments of peace and quiet.

I could go on adding detail until my memory ran out and all my readers had given up, but no matter how many words I added, it wouldn’t amount to more than the barest glimpse of a life. That he died so suddenly, without warning and a chance to say goodbye, hurts for those of us left behind, but the silver lining is there to see if you can manage it. It was a good life — it could hardly be a better one — and it ended without suffering. He left behind the best of memories and having done his best to leave the world better than he found it. We should all be so lucky.

For his family and friends, we now have to adjust. As much as death is an inevitable part of life, saying goodbye to a massive part of your life isn’t something that we’re taught to do. We have to figure out what our lives will be like in his absence. We’ll have to cope with the grief of all the moments that will never be. To be reminded every now and then that there won’t be another chance to talk with him. To see a photo, or read something and think of sharing it, and be pierced to the heart in an instant.

The sun is shining and the world is still. There are terrible things going on, and it sometimes feels like the worst people are running everything. But most of us have examples we can look to and know that it can be better. My dad was that for me. He is still.

Cancer Update

I normally think of myself as a pretty stoic person, but starting to cough up blood the night before my dad’s funeral, while waiting for my brother to fly back from Australia in the midst of a global pandemic pushed me as close to panic as I’ve been for a long time. Exactly what the cause was, I don’t know, but the odds are that wearing a mask for extended periods of time was too tough on my lungs and a blood vessel went pop somewhere. Then I made it worse by taking part in the funeral while wearing a mask too — though that part I don’t regret at all.

As a result I haven’t been able to stay at home as I wanted to — even with the pandemic, there are still people dropping by to offer their condolences, and I need to be isolated so I don’t have to wear a mask. I did get myself checked out at the hospital and there are no signs of anything worse going on, and it’s now been several days since the last spot of blood, so I think I’m on the mend. Still, it’s a reminder that despite the good scan results recently, I need to take care. Especially amidst everything that 2020 has become.