Threescore years and ten used often to be mentioned.
Today Paul would have been 36.
No plans, no expectations.
But we had intended to go to see Mumbles lighthouse from here
Instead, our view was somewhat different. Somewhat familiar albeit in a place I hadn't been since I was 14.
The entrance to a PET scanner unit. The doors open to a set of rooms where cannulas are inserted, blood is taken, tested and a dose of radioactive sugar solution is administered. Once all is well the cannula is removed and you are required to lie still for an hour or so whilst the radioactivity is allowed to do its job.
Then 40 minutes or more are spent flat on your back with your hands above your head whilst motors whirr, switches click and clack as you are moved back and forth in a very expensive tube.
So much lying around on any other day would not have been so bad. But today.
Too much time to think. Too much to remember. Too much to relive. Too much to assimilate. Too much to even try to come to terms with. Just far too much.
Sadness so deeply felt, waves of it relentlessly rolling every thought in an ever tighter and darker spiral. Probably as bad today as any in the last year. But no despair. No questions. Acceptance of what is and what will be. Faith forced to be real.
Gratitude for every memory, even the recent ones in their terrible way.
Thankfulness for the thirty five and a half years we had.
Wonder as we were privileged to witness the way he dealt with his final months, days, hours and minutes.
Sadness that he's not here, sadness compounded by his absence from wife and son.
It is a magnificent gift when your son demonstrates to you how to die well.
I hope I measure up to the standard he established.
Paul was a far better man than his dad ever was or will be.
Today was not a good day.
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