Here we go again. Hello darkness my old friend. Isn't it funny how you can experience an emotional landscape, sit with it, come to terms with it, think you're all good with it, and then feel it rising up to punch you in the face so hard it floors you? 


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That's how I'm feeling today after finding out Dad's biopsy result. After a surf yesterday I popped over and we went out for a coffee and breakfast after Dad got his stitches out from his op last week. It was only when he got home and we played around for a bit taking the drone up that he threw the results on the table for Mum and I to see. 

Bam. Epitheliod mesothelioma. 

Well. 

Dad's response? Well, 76 isn't that bad. He's not keen to have more chemo or radiation. He did wonder where he got it from, but he was a draftsman who measured up on building sites. Asbestos was everywhere back then. 

It is what it is, he said. 


And he's right, and we've been here before, but it doesn't make it any easier. I sat there trying to follow his lead and be brave but my heart was constricting pretty tightly. 

Life expectancy isn't that long for this disease. 

Dad put his noise cancelling headphones on my head and put on a song. This one. It was very, very, very hard to be strong and brave and all I could do not to cry. It's a great song - it's off the Stones new album and they've really done something beautiful with this one. 

> Well, I got to take a break from it all
'Cause the wind and the wilderness calls
And I just need some peace from the stars
I got to take a break from it all

> And I got to take a break for a while
Where there ain't another human for a hundred miles
I hate being enclosed by the walls
And I got to take a break from it all

> I'll be dancing on diamonds, I'll be skating on glass
I'll be chopping up wood, I'll be splitting the halves
An old AM radio is all that I've got
It just plays Hank Williams and some bad honky-tonk
'Cause I got to take a break from it all

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5qYl5LtucQ

> And I got to brеak away from it all
From the city and the suburbs and sprawl
And the small town chattеr and the know-it-alls
To a place where no one can call

> And I won't hear the sirens or the maddening crowd
Just the bark of a fox and the hoot of an owl
Ain't got no connections or a satellite phone
I'm avoiding the pictures and the people back home
And I just got to break free from it all

The poignancy lies in the subtext - not merely about an old man looking for peace from the 'maddening crowd' in London but breaking free from this mortal coil and heading into the wilderness of what comes next. And it's Dad, of course, when we used to drive down the Great Ocean Road from Melbourne when we were kids, telling us to take deep breaths of the fresh ocean air because we had to go back to the city. 

When I left, I drove down the Great Ocean Road listening to it again and bawling my eyes out. 

Oh, Dad. It's hard to imagine the world without you in it. 

As I write this today I'm trying to distract myself at work. Writing this wasn't a good idea - that feeling has come back. So I'm going to leave it alone now, and if I don't respond to comments, it's because I can't. 

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# `With Love,` 


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