Your Daddy's Gonna Die

One night, I had a dream where this crow came and said: "Your aunt is gonna die."

I was so scared, I woke up my parents, but they said it was just a dream and to get back to bed.
 
But the next morning, my Aunt Stacy was dead.
                                    
It wasn't three weeks later when the crow came back to me in a dream and said, "Your daddy's gonna die."  I didn't know what to do.
                    
I finally told my father, but he said: "Oh, not to worry." But I could see he was rattled.

The next morning, he wasn't himself, he kept looking around, waiting for something to drop on his head -- because the crow didn't say how it was gonna happen, just those words: "Your daddy's gonna die."
 
He left home early that day, and was gone a long time.  When he finally came back, he looked terrible, like he was waiting for the axe to fall all day.

He said to my mother: "I've just had the worst day of my life."
"You think you've had a bad day?" she said, "This morning, the milkman dropped dead on the porch." (extract from 'Big Fish' (2003) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0319061/)

In the winter of 2007, my aunt died of cancer. She was my Dad's older sister, and as a kid she'd played a big part in raising him in a big family in east London, in post-war Britain.

My aunt had been in remission, but when the disease returned she chose not to fight it. I'm not sure if anyone knows for certain how long she had known for, and kept quiet.

I signed up to trek the Inca Trail in Peru the following year, to raise money for Macmillan Cancer Support -- giving something back to the people who had given so much care and support to my family when it was needed most.

My aunt is still missed by everyone who knew her, it doesn't seem right that she's simply not around any more.

I recently got the news my uncle, that is one of my Dad's older brothers, was ill and in hospital. He'd become confused, disorientated, and was sent for tests. Just about the worst fear was confirmed: it was a brain tumour, and because of the size and scale of the tumour, it was inoperable. This kind of cancer is often considered secondary to a possibly-undiscovered or undiagnosed primary cancer elsewhere in the body. The upshot is it's not a good prognosis. It's heartbreaking, and I can't decide if it's a blessing or a curse that he doesn't know he's dying. It's certainly not easy on his family that he often doesn't recognise them.

But it's the entirely selfish element that brings me to this post. I'm scared now my Daddy's gonna die. This is two of his older siblings, and I think it was Hodgkin's Lymphoma that killed his own Father at an early age. It's been a long time since my Dad thought he was going to die young as well, like there was some in-built early expiry date -- but I can tell he is quietly worried as well. What if these aren't isolated incidents, but instead a trend, a sign of things to come -- not just for him, but for all his siblings?

All I can do is offer support, to try not to worry unduly about something that might not happen -- but remain wary -- and start planning another fundraising challenge, to raise money for the people who need it.