4 - Saying Goodbye to Margaret: 6 September 2024

So it has finally come to this.  Tomorrow I must say goodbye, and this time I have to REALLY mean it. Or at least I have to try and mean it even if I truly, truly know it is impossible for me to mean it.  I have to mean it because I am throwing her ashes all over the top of Ireland’s Holy Mountain, all over the top of Croagh Patrick. 

The last time we went to Croagh Patrick Margaret had to wait in the café at the bottom.  The sheath encasing her spine had - to use my own non medical language - started to rot and she was in pain and unable to even think about climbing mountains.  Tomorrow, that will not be an issue for her.  I will carry all 2.1 kilograms of her on my back.  I will carry her to the top just as I have carried her all the way from Adelaide.

It has been such a long trip.  Get to Adelaide airport and wait around until it was time to board the plane to Melbourne.  Wait around in Melbourne airport until it was time to board the plane to Dubai. Wait around in Dubai airport until it was time to catch the plane to Dublin.  Get a taxi from Dublin airport to the hotel.  Wander around the streets of Dublin soaking up memories of a time when you walked those same streets with me, laughing at my idiosyncrasies, poking fun at just that moment when SOMEONE had to poke fun at me, so you poked the fun.

Today we completed the nearly final leg of this long, long goodbye.  I packed you up in my back pack and drove to Westport on the western coast of Ireland.  Tomorrow, we drive to Croagh Patrick, we walk to the top with you riding on my back, I cry my eyes out once again, I scatter you in this holy place, and then I go down the mountain so I can cry my eyes out all over again.

And then it will all be over.  I will have said my final goodbyes - except it will not REALLY be over will it? I will still have this aching void deep inside me and you will still keep wondering whether I will be alright.  And of course, I will be sort of alright, but I have no idea what it means to be “sort of alright”.  I presume it means I will still miss you and I have trouble imagining how still missing you can possibly be better than how I have felt ever since you died.  But I did promise you that I would be okay and I have never broken any promises I have made to you. 

I know what I can do.  I can draw some inspiration from Mission Impossible where every mission is impossible but Tom Cruise always manages to do the impossible.  Yes, now I have a plan.  Watch Mission Impossible and learn how to do the impossible.  Perhaps Tom Cruise can lend me one of his script writers.  I wonder if that will work?

I suspect the Irish weather knows you are dead.  Usually, when people die, we express our grief by crying, but the Irish weather could not do that.  When it rains as often as it does in Ireland, no one would ever know that the rain has stopped and that tears are falling instead.  So the rain in Ireland has stopped, just for you Margaret.

So there we have it.  The long, long goodbye will come to a phony end tomorrow.  I will try and force myself to act as dictated by the plan, even if it is a stupid plan.

My thoughts feel as empty as my heart.  You loved the Bee Gees and in one of their songs, the Bee Gees asked “How Can You mend a Broek Heart?”  I suspect the answer to their question contains two words = “You can’t” but I hope I am wrong.  I hope I can discover a sensible answer to a serious question that cannot possibly have an answer that makes sense.

I do know this as a certainty every bit as true as Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.  You are the finest human being I have ever known and now you are gone.  Over more than three years, the cancer tried to kill you and it failed.  Multiple times the cancer seemed to have beaten you and the doctors were without hope, but the cancer never defeated you and the doctors were wrong.  Every time that the cancer seemed to be about to take our life, you smashed the cancer, leaving the doctors bewildered.  To my knowledge, that happened at least five times.  On one occasion, the cancer had spread into your lymph nodes and opened up a superhighway to spread itself throughout your body.  Your response to this?  Next time the doctors had a look, your lymph nodes were cancer free.  When you were dying in the hospice – a place where no one could be admitted unless their death is certain, you vanished the cancer out of your body completely and they sent you home to complete your rehabilitation.  And then, just then when the cancer was gone, you gave your body permission to die from an infection.

I love you Margaret and we can complete this long journey to goodbye tomorrow on Croagh Patrick.  If you help, perhaps I can get some sleep tonight.