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Prologue  05/02/2024

I’ve been writing some things but posting very little. There is so much compression in the world situation at the moment. To be honest, I don’t really know where I’m sitting with all this or if there is any reason to continue writing. It’s taken up so much of my resources. On one hand I’ve seen my work and terminology turning up in vast and high end places. On the other hand, I have absolutely no solidified reality of anything that would suggest that what I have written has been read by more than possibly an awesome few. That in itself would be sensational. It isn’t that I’m searching for credit. My entire life at the moment is a vortex. In addition to surfing this wave while living through this story. In my daily life caring for my parents who have cognitive decline brought on by old age and all the life stress and worries that caused high blood pressure and subsequent cognitive damage for my mum. Just trying to make basic directional decisions has become at best impossible, because, because, because… And eventually the afternoon of NYE 2024 it all come to a head when an aneurysm ruptured in my brain. 

After the surgery, initial observation and recovery I was advised that I had come through on a 1 out of 3 survival rate. Another advice was a mortality rate of 60%. I wasn’t clear on what way around that was or if it was a previous or current statistic. But the surgeon telling me 1 out of 3 kind of stuck in there. The vasospasms in the brain, kind of like aftershocks in the blood vessel’s can kick you dead after making it through the initial survival. As excruciating as the angiograms were, that is how the doctors monitor the blood vessels and deliver the medicine required to rectify this. Being back at home after such news though does come with a strange feeling. 

Last year was rather intense and it certainly ended that way. I’d written a number of posts through the year. Some I have been quite passionate about, but for various reasons and complexities I have posted little. This post is more about my personal experience of life through this. I have developed so much in myself since this journey began 7 years ago. I have written things about myself that are available for public view that no one has ever known. Things that my closet family have hardly ever or never known. For reasons along the way, I wrote about near every growing slip, stupid and embarrassing thing I’ve done, and I don’t really know where I sit with some of that. It’s all raw work sent out there under a live real-time feed without proof reading or feedback of any kind. If I felt and had reason that it needed to be written, it was. 

Most of my life has been focused on inner self work, and family. I haven’t tried to climb the social ladders, and I’m not up to speed with, apart from basic etiquette, courtesy and manners that humanity teaches us, a lot of the social expectancy’s, clicks and cues that runs society, and quite honestly, I think a lot of the world is in a similar situation. Mostly my life has been dedicated to my family, and trying to understand how to be a better person. With all the trials, forgiveness and tribulations that goes with that. I am so grateful to be a part of the family I have around me. 

Having been a full time carer for my parents for the previous couple of years they have become my main focus with most of my time, apart from writing dedicated to them. We’ve always been close. My injury and hospital stay is bringing about a change that we had touched on, but hadn’t really prepared for. I know we are lucky in our circumstance. There is war and tragedy in the world. We ourselves lost much of our family to war before I was born. This is who our family is today. Coming home to their place and realising that they may never be coming back there again triggered a series of realisations in me that have been crashing in. My heart has been breaking, more than it ever has before in my life. Looking around it’s difficult to realise that they probably won’t be back here again.

I’m lucky. I can visit them. Sometimes it feels as a sweat mercy, but one that I am truly grateful. Through this experience i have come to consider what, I, as a family member and person must mean to them, and others who care around me. So often I walk by considering myself as dust. I’ve come to consider, without previously having really done so in sincere depth, what we must have meant to my step dad when he joined our family. We’ve been through rough times he and I. But I’m lucky, with all the tough times we stayed strong. When it come to it, we pulled together. For the most part things were usually ok, we had good times and he was always there for me. I’d keep him on his toes and we’ve done incredible work together.

Through each others toughness and gruffness we have been working on surrendering to each others love for some while now. To his love of me as a father. And I as a son. That’s been a tough one for me. Angry at a father that wasn’t there because he couldn’t be. And lucky enough to realise the person that was. 

January 2024

I’m going through a lot of changes at this time. After an intense period of considerable and prolonged pressure, confusion and stress I collapsed on my front lawn mid afternoon NYE 2024 after an aneurism ruptured in my brain. I had been experiencing severe headaches for quite a number of weeks, around a month ? But after getting myself a taxi to the hospital, a ct scan didn’t indicate any forewarning. 

While a terrible thing to occur, especially on the day of New Year’s Eve, things also happened in the best possible circumstance. A man walking his dog alerted my neighbours, my neighbours got me into recovery position and alerted the ambulance, the paramedics got me to the hospital, and the hospital got me to another hospital with a full neurosurgical team. I’ve since heard that a couple of kids walking by alerted my other neighbours, who also called an ambulance. Thank you, each of you. And for the technology and development of skills that got me through this.

After emergency brain surgery I woke in good health and under constant observation. I had a tube draining excess brain fluid coming out of my head and I’m guessing that I must have been thrashing around somewhat as I had a clump of hair matted to about the size of a small coffee saucer in my hair measuring 29mm thick at the section I checked with verniers. But my life, thanks to these people, actions and facilities was spared. 

During the time of my incapacitation my sister worked with the aged care and social worker services to ensure my parents, who I had been caring for full time for approximately two years were safe and cared for. After waking in good health I learned of my parents remote care situation. It was such a relief to know they were being cared for and immediately dropped my stress levels. There was a strong consideration that they may not be coming home, but i knew they were being looked after. On site aged care was being recommended, and that hit home fairly hard, but they were ok.

We had mildly touched on raising aged care as a consideration. But I was doing what i wanted to be doing and that was caring for them. I was so grateful to be able to do so, and we were just working things out to give me some extra help and reprieve from time to time.

After my surgery, and the concerns of their increasing cognitive decline, the challenge of keeping them safe at home had been escalating. To keep them home I would have had to of challenged the Doctors advise, and to be honest, in the situation, and waking up with a row of staples and a tube in my head, I agreed with them. 

As the realisation came to sink in, I have been feeling completely broken inside. There is a lot involved in this for me. I have loved my life with my family. I have struggled through most of my life, and argued with my old man in days gone, but the life I have lived with them I have loved. We have never been blessed financially, but we have been close as a family. We have been close to financial reprieve on occasion. Like it’s been knocking on our door, but closed by another path foreordained. 

We have all given much to this life. While myself and John, who joined our family when I was around 7 or 8 years of age worked our way through some personality clashes. We always stuck by each other. My birth father had been a tradesmen who knew how to work a lathe, and that was deep seated in me. Eventually I become a light vehicle mechanic in earlier adult life and settled into small engines later. While I fixed cars John’s talent was selling them. He proved himself pretty handy with things, but something in me was looking for those tradesmens eyes that had looked so deep into me. 

What a life we’ve had. The things we’ve done, the challenges we’ve been through, how we’ve worked together. These are the things I’ve loved. We may have had a clash or two, and it took me awhile to realise. But he was always there for me. Always doing what he could, and always teaching me as much as I’d let him, though that proved to be no where near as much as he would have. We wore each other down really. I helped loosen him up, we all helped with that. And eventually he wore me down until i realised he loved me. I never really thought what I must have meant to him. Working out on the property, moving furniture together every time we had to move house. We got good at it, me and him. Mum flat out packing and unpacking. Me and him loading the trailer and moving fridges and furniture up and down stairs, and through tight and winding passageway’s. All of us trying to keep up with each other. I hated that we had to move as often as we did. But I love the life we lived through it. We all just got tired eventually, and that broke me a little. I guess I kept a little secret in me through all this, even from myself. That is that I love him as a father. 

I’ve always been close with my mum. But more recently I realised that she has always been my best friend. From the darkest nights as a child when I was near frozen with fright, my mum would come check on me. Blazing with light she would free me from the clutches. There were nights that got so bad i was drenched in sweat. They were difficult times for me. But every morning she would come in brighter than the sunshine. I was always so happy to see her. It was like waking up in the happiest fairytale. We would chat and giggle for ages. And even though she was a widow doing her best to keep up with work and everything that keeping a house and a family entails, she would always find the time to be so wonderful and kind. She would wash away the dark of night and all the frightful sights, and always knew how to get a smile out of me. I know it was hard times for her, but she was always so good to me and my sister. Our conversation grew and grew, and we were always laughing. My sister knew just how to set the spark.

I get along with my old man, but i talk with my mum. Always have. I remember as a teenager when i started going beyond her conversation, and I remember later in life when the conversation would take a turn and she would think i was having a go at her. But I wasn’t. I would try to explain, please consider how much i love you, how much I support who you are and how grateful I am. I know we are working through tough grounds, but do you really think, with these things considered that I’m standing here saying bad things about you ?

I know it’s tough. People get caught here. It’s like someone being tangled in reeds for so long that it’s become almost symbiotic and the person starts defending the reeds as if one’s self. We went through all the esoteric, you’re defending something that you don’t believe in stuff that we are both familiar with thanks to the way that she raised me. It took near I reakon twenty years of her own inner work to break through this. It would get to me being so frustrated from her thinking that I was saying anything bad about her that I would storm out and slam the door. We would have had maybe a handful of arguments through our life. Barley Ever. This is something different. But with the accumulation of frustration, I’d have to leave. 

My conversation with life and my understanding has so much to do with my mum. I never would have got as far through it without the effort of her inner work. I remember as a teenager when I started going beyond her conversation. She always supported me to find my own way. If I had wanted to go to church, she would take me to church. But if I was in a rage, a temper or uncontrollable tears she would take me to a stream, and there she would let me be until I would calm down enough to give her a hug. And then we’d go home. I’m still working through things with my dad, but we made good grounds.

My mum and I broke through most of it. I’m not having a go at you, I’m explaining you through something. We moved through a lot thanks to her inner work and surrendering that knee jerk reaction. It was a lot of work from both of us. My explanation is rarely having a go at anyone, (it’s obvious if I am), but people often seem to put them selves in the way of an explanation because they relate to it, then identify themselves as it, then defend it. 

I would get so upset that she would even conceive that I was saying anything against her. I never would have got as far through my conversation without her cutting free. It’s a lot of work on her behalf. I’m still working though this with my dad, but we’ve made it a fair way through. 

We’re all realising the change that has come. We worked hard for the lives we have struggled through and shared together. There isn’t much left to say to each other just that we want to keep saying it. I’m proud of you. I love you. Thank you. You are my family. Death won’t separate us.