Coroner's report and a smashed jug

As is common in blogging, I tend only to write when I feel bad. Actually today that wasn't meant to be as I have been feeling okay recently and had thought about posting something - I probably had a run of about 4 or 5 days where I felt okay.

Now I'm feeling low again, I think for several reasons. They include probable PMT (according to my half-hearted charting). They include the fact that my mother finally received the coroner's report on my Dad's death. Only I really wanted it, I don't think she would have asked for it otherwise.

It said that he had had a heart attack about three days before he died. If that heart attack had been detected maybe the clot which caused his attack-weakened heart to rupture could have been prevented. The neck pain he had a few days before he died (which had been getting better) may well have been a sign of a heart attack, as my mother suspected with 20:20 hindsight vision. If he had had an angiogram at the weekend, maybe he would still be alive today.

He also had atherosclerosis in his aorta. I can't really doubt that that was caused by anything other than him smoking for many years. At first probably more than 20 a day, but for at least the past five years only about 4 a day. He gave up for two years when I was about 10, but started again when his own father died. It took him many years come to terms with my grandfather's death.

Here's one futile line of thought I'm having. My mother is a retired anaesthetist. At the time of Dad's death, my mother, and my father, were worried about me. I had my amniocentesis scheduled and knew that it was unlikely to give me good news. My mother wanted to come and stay. Dad had been feeling unwell and I told her that I didn't want her to come while he wasn't feeling well. I am glad she didn't come as who would have discovered my Dad's body then?

But what if she had been distracted by worry for me? She might have been annoyed with my Dad if she had really wanted to come here since he was the reason that she was not able to. Maybe she didn't notice the heart attack signs because she was distracted by me?

Even as I write this, I know that I will never know, which is why this line of thought is futile. She actually did run down the heart attack list of questions with him when he wasn't feeling well and they didn't indicate a heart attack. I think she probably listened to his chest as well. I'm not sure and I can't ask her that now; what if the answer is no? His own doctor had offered to see him but my Dad didn't want to go and said he was feeling better. My mum says that if she had told him to go, he would have done. But she didn't.

I had been supposed to go on a business trip to my local area the week before. If I had gone I definitely would have stayed the weekend with my parents. I didn't get travel approval for the trip (there are travel budget restrictions) and my manager had told me to push for it. I didn't chase it up as I didn't feel like travelling what with my pregnancy beginning to show and me waiting for bad news. I didn't push it and I didn't end up going. It was actually a travel approval process that didn't work, I had submitted my request weeks before and didn't get an answer in time.

If I had gone, I would have seen my Dad the last weekend he was alive. Maybe I would have encouraged him to go to hospital? I know and understand why I didn't push it. I thought my plate was full, not knowing how overflowing it could actually get. But maybe maybe maybe.

As it is the last time I saw my Dad alive was at Christmas. I have had several dreams about him, in which he comes back. In the dreams, we all accept that he died but somehow he comes back like he's just been away. In one of them we told him that we're sorry we sold his car, since we thought he wasn't coming back.

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Things have been a little better between DH and I, although right at this precise moment they're not great but I'm putting that down mostly to my PMT. A good metaphor of DH's which I have extended a little and which describe how I feel about my life. I've written something along similar lines before.

Take a jug and throw it, full of water, on the floor so it smashes. You have to clean up the water before you can even begin to pick up the pieces of the jug. Then you spend many months finding the big pieces and putting them back together. Some of the small pieces are lost but after a long, painful time, you have something which resembles a jug again and you've managed to put a little bit of water in the bottom. It's a bit leaky but it seems to be holding.

Then just as you put the jug on the table again, it slips off and smashes on the floor again. The little bit of water in the bottom is lost, the jug is broken along new lines and old lines. And you have to start again. The best it's ever going to look is with the old and new cracks showing.