(no subject)

[johnny9fingers]

The Kid Bro' has left.
'Twas a good visit.
We saw Geoffrey and John yesterday. G. in reasonable form, considering. The Mother held court, but ruled both M and myself most gently: she's mellowing, I fear. Made Michael sit in the front on the way there: he's a bad passenger anyway, but I thought I'd give him a proper appreciation of the Mother's driving. He offered me the front seat on the way home. Even his good nature has its limits, evidently.
Last night we broached the bottle of whisky that he'd brought me for my birthday: a Speyside Malt called Abelour....sweetish sort of taste which reminded me a bit of 'blue label', which is I know, a blend. There's still slightly more than half the bottle remaining: so we didn't cane it, as it were. But I did notice a slight throbbing of the temple this not-so-merry morn. As the poet Wodehouse observed in one of his more spiritual moments: If not disgruntled, I could be said to be not entirely gruntled.
We three, Mike, the Mother, and me, after breakfast, drove to the Crematorium and Garden of Remembrance (capitalised as if we were feeble-minded and sentimentalist) where I found myself unexpectedly-like with a lump in the throat, and a general desire both to wish well for the world, and yet still absent myself from it.
The roses were good in the summer, but November is its own season: as bleak and beautiful as she can be. We were both November's children, Dad on the 24th, me on the 21st. She claimed him by default: that was just when he died. We stayed by the rose-beds then walked around the pond.
The Mother said "I don't really feel him here" so I paused and considered.
"But still, if not him, then the things he loved: the roses, the wildlife, the squirrel running along the fence" and just for a moment it seemed that words could conjure images or more and through the light that had some peculiar liquid quality, shimmering, golden, it seemed that reality could break, and we might catch a glimpse of him pruning a rose or putting stakes in to support new growth.
It's what emotions do: they colour the moment with unbalanced and unjustified meaning.
But reality never breaks. Or it always breaks and always remains the same.
Mike said "it doesn't feel like it's been a year."
I didn't say what I felt.
Time to move on. RIP Old Man.
To the best of my knowledge the Old Man had no sins, only virtues: but I would say that, wouldn't I? Allow me my bias: I believe it to be founded in many years of observation, and I'm a reasonable judge of character.

I might have some more whisky tonight. But not too much.