Loss

I have, as you may, or may not, have noticed, been posting quite a lot recently and have even managed to figure out how to alter headings and stuff on this blog. This is for the ultimately simple reason that in a town geared towards tourism, diving and snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef and other such expensive activities, spending $1 an hour on the internet is the best time consuming cheap activity that I can think of (and before you even think 'Why doesn't she go sunbathing' I'll tell you that I don't because it's a) insufferably hot out there, b) very very sunny with very very little ozone layer and c) I didn't have the good fortune like my Big Sister to inherit skin that tans oooh no, I go red. Then white again. So, sunbathing, or sunbaking as they call it out here is definately out). Anyway, as per usual, I've used my Big Sister's blog as a starting point and gone on to read the blogs she recommends because in these, as in most things, my sister has impecably good taste. Today however I have also been reading her past posts and in a moment of slight depression read her entry for the 11th May 2005. All this made me recall a conversation with TAB my last night in Melbourne. We were a bit tipsy having spent the afternoon drinking beer and then moving on to a rather nice (his third best) bottle of red wine from his laid down collection of expensive wines. Unfortunately the wine was from 1999 and, when already tipsy and depressed from the fact I had to leave the next day, I commented that that was not a good year as it was then that my dad died. This did not impress TAB. He told me in no uncertain terms that I had to stop comparing everything that happens to me to this most unfortunate event in my life. He understood that it was terrible and everything but I had to stop referring to it all the time, it wasn't good for me. In my defence, firstly I'm a lot better than I used to be. I can actually mention my father without feeling the need to burst into tears. I'm getting to grips with the fact that he's not coming back and I can dwell on the happier memories of my childhood and him. Secondly I don't mention him THAT much, or at least, his death, I can't, it still really hurts but recently things have brought it to the front of my mind again. Fathers day for one, the fact that a few of my friends at Skydive Nagambie had thought that my friend John was my father when we first started skydiving and the fact that he has since died. Third and finally, I was drunk. I can understand why he may get a little bit annoyed at me being maudlin, I did bring down the afternoon a little and he has never lost someone that close. Until you've been through it yourself, you can never understand the impact something like that will have. I can see his point though, I must try and remember all the good things about my father without it inevitably coming to the point that it does, a vision of him lying there in that bloody awful duck egg blue satin covering. Good god but he would have hated that damn cloth. So, I think I'm going to go and lounge by the pool at Gecko's and think happy thoughts of a time gone by and hopeful thoughts of the future; of my little niece or nephew soon to come; of, in the scheme of things, how lucky I've been to have the presence and support of my family even when I do something as damn silly as throw myself out of perfectly good planes, and the certain knowledge that as long as my brother, my sister and I follow our dreams our mum is proud of us, as dad would have been.