The worst thing that could happen to me

My mind is still filled with confusion over so many things. But during the last days I have found myself thinking over and again how the loss of one of my children, the loss of Kay, is truly the worst possible thing that could have happened to me. I don't mean this in some impersonal, philosophical way. I mean it in a personal, crushing, full-of-individual-meaning way.

Perhaps without realising it, I have always seen myself as a father, looked forward to being a father, enjoyed every second of being a father. In an implicit way, being a father has been my life's mission. Indeed, there have been many other things that have filled my life with meaning, such as running a business or flying, and there have been times when these things were in the foreground, when I would have told you that they were fundamental to my life. But when I look back, it's always been my kids who have meant everything to me.

When Lauren was a born I wanted to be involved right from the start, as if she were some new gadget that had been given to my wife. I bathed her, cleaned her, baby-sat her, looked after her when she was ill and played with her. I read the "Secret Life of the Unborn Child", I followed her development with fascinated, experimentally based interest and, when her mother walked out of the door and left us, I went from working 50 hours a week to 24 and completely turned my life upside-down to put Lauren at the centre of it. I fought tooth and nail to retain custody of Lauren in the divorce that followed and, in the end, I did. 

Kay was born with a milk allergy which left her constantly screaming with tummy cramps. But it was about 5 months or so before we got that problem under control. In the meantime, when I came home from work, Marion would dump Kay into my arms and say, "Now it's your turn" and I would spend the rest of the evening and my share of the night massaging Kay's tummy and cuddling her to sleep. Then we found that Kay had a hip deformity which meant that her legs had to be kept in a special harness for six months or more. And then she got a nasty skin infection which was more or less the precursor to leukaemia. 

In a way I never really minded all of these things - I was looking after my kids and there's nothing more satisfying than that. Of course, there was tension and worry and fear and all the usual standard operating concerns that such problems bring. But I never felt that I should have been doing something else, that I was being cheated out of MY life. Through all of this I knew that there's no higher calling than looking after your children.

(I will note here that I've not mentioned Natasha. That's because Natasha, from the moment she was born, has not caused us a single problem. She was the perfect baby, born to a family in leukaemia crisis. She slept through the night, almost from day one, and ever since she has never needed more than her fair share of attention and has frequently got on for long periods with much less than her fair share.)

In the course of the years people have said to me that they see me as a natural father. I couldn't comment, except to say that that doesn't seem to be much of a challenge - to my mind anyone can be a 'natural father', it's simply a question of love and applied learning. But looking back now, perhaps I can see what they mean: I love kids and I especially love MY kids and NOTHING, not one single thing, could be worse than losing one of them. 

What they don't tell you about getting older is that your options shrink, that your life becomes cast in concrete and at some point you have to give up and simply accept what you have got. My life has become a fabric of responsibilities, commitments, dependencies and obligations to such an extent that there is no room left for alternatives without shattering that fabric. I despise people who fail to honour the fabric of their lives, who shatter that fabric for selfish ends. 

I look at the mess that my life has become and some part of me yearns to do it all over again and to do it right this time. But I cannot become what I so despise and so I have to learn to accept that THIS IS IT. There's no going back, there's no changing facts, there are no viable alternatives. My family is broken, we're missing 20% of our substance and nothing will ever change that fact. 

The worst thing that could happen to me, has happened to me and there is no escape.