Dad

I've been thinking about my Dad a lot recently, I am not sure why.
He sometimes seems closer when I am most in despair.

I sat with him when his life support was switched off, four years ago, and my siblings went off to get drunk, but I couldn't imagine how they could do that, and I didn't drink and couldn't bear to leave him.
In a way I envied him, because his battle was over, his struggle as an autism sufferer in such a complex world, it was over for him, while I was in the middle of hell in my life in Jersey and wished he could have lived and I could have died.

I remember how my dad got the scar on his forehead. I saw it happen, he was hit on the head by a lump of breezeblock in one of the riots, I remember him running back towards me with blood pouring down his face and shirt, and he told me to get in the house, and we both got into the house in time.

But for a year after that, and even in the homeless hostel after we fled, that scene replayed in my dreams over and over, and in one memorable dream, my dad was killed, and my brother was trying to move his body to get him away from the rioters.

In contrast, back to the church of england, I remember Jill Lihou saying she thought she would have to take her grandson on a skiing trip to help him recover because he had seen his dad, who is a priest in Guernsey get into an argument and have a glass of water thrown in his face.