SJ Longthorne

The things I remember: 1. The sheer knowing, walking out of school and seeing all my family waiting there, where before it had been neighbours driving me home, because everybody else was around the bed. The unsolicited “Is it true?”

2. Sitting on the stairs that night and feeling weirdly out of tears, weirdly disconnected, and insisting to my mum that I would wait there until he came home, even though I mostly knew he wouldn’t — an action my mum now finds more sentimental to think about than I do.

3. The entrance exam I sat the next day for a school that I would hate, but that both my parents wanted for me. Mum said I didn’t have to do it, and perhaps I didn’t; maybe they’d have let me delay it, or even just gift me the place. But I did it. Better than sitting around.

4. The smell. The uncanny, sweet, pink smell of cancer that I still smell sometimes, and remember smelling in the house of a family friend before she also died a few years ago. The smell stayed awhile. Then it was gone.

5. The sound of clattering dishes and my mum crying somewhere else on the house, and 10y/o me not knowing whether to hug her, which felt awkward, or to wait it out, because maybe she just needed to cry. I should have hugged her.

There ends my dad’s memorial thread. Maybe it helps you.