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About my Dad
By RickMeasham | September 20, 2007
Many of you will already know this, and will know more than I’m able to write about just yet …
Right about the time I last updated this site, my dad was diagnosed with leukemia. The doctors tried a course of chemotherapy, but it didn’t do anywhere near as much as they’d hoped. So they suggested a transplant would be the way to go.
His brother and sisters were tested for compatibility and the doctors settled on Olive, his oldest sister. Olive was a great match and so the transplant went ahead. He wasn’t hit with the ‘guest versus host’ disease that was the big risk, mainly due to the medication he was on. In fact he was in remission and all looked good when Fatima and I drove to Sydney on the June long weekend. Dad and June, Fatima and I went out and really enjoyed ourselves at a seafood buffet.
Unfortunately, shortly after that it all took a turn for the worse. Very quickly really. My sister Jacqui was visiting him in August when the guest-versus-host kicked in at the same time as he caught pneumonia. She telephoned and suggested it might be good to come up to Sydney to visit him soon. Shortly after she rang back to say ‘this week’, then again ‘today if you can’. I quickly changed my plane ticket (thankyou JetStar for understanding!) and managed to get to see my dad just one more time. We arrived at the hospital about 5 minutes before he died. I told him how much I loved and respected him, and I played a cassette tape Fatima had recorded for him. I can’t describe it any other way than ‘lovely’.
I always thought it would be ‘yucky’ to be in a room with a dead person, but it wasn’t. I really appreciated that at one point the others left for one reason or another and I was left alone with Dad’s earthly remains. In that time I was able to be angry with him for leaving, to be sad for myself that I’d lost a great friend and thankful for the life he’d lived.
The funeral was a great celebration. People say that, but it really was. We didn’t know many people there and most of it washed over me. But the recessional was “The Holy City”. It was a great song to go out on and it made my heart break for people who are left wondering what happens after you die.
Afterwards we took Dad to a cemetery that we’d found a way off from June’s place. It was the perfect place for Dad. It’s surrounded by gum trees and is really quiet. If it weren’t a cemetery, it’s just the sort of place Dad would have gone camping. Actually, knowing Dad, that may well have not stopped him.
The Friday before he went was the day of our 12-week ultrasound. So that was the day we knew we were having a boy. So it was great to be able to share with Dad the name we’d chosen years before. He’ll never get to meet his grandson, so sharing that was really special.
Wow, I’ve written a lot more than I thought I could!
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