August 8 2013

Today is the 30th anniversary of my dear dad dying. It might have been yesterday. I was working in Debden in Essex and played tennis after work with colleagues. Late home my wife of the time was waiting up to give me the news. I rushed round to see mum to learn dad had suffered a heart attack but was okay. When I saw him in Chase Farm Enfield he looked fit and well. He'd just been to Spain on holiday and he was tanned and as bright and chirpy as ever. Then as the days progressed he caught pleurisy. The damage to his heart was too much and at 2 a.m. one night I got the call to come up. Took mum and we passed a hospital bed in a corridor where someone was being given the electro treatment to shock the heart back into life. I realised later it was my dad but it didn't work. a very kindly doctor explained he had gone. "He was a good man" was all mum could say and we were gone. I phoned my brother and he came over and we grieved that awful initial sorrow when it is too early to know exactly what has happened but you know all too well that life will never be the same again.

It certainly changed me. My marriage ended. Eventually I met Clare. I moved back in with mum who was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's. She died in 1996 aged 71 but had gone many years before that. I think about them both every day. Dad comes to me as a blackbird and I talk to him. Mum is the reliable but less colourful female partner. It changed my outlook on life. My dad was 59, younger than I am now. He fought in the war in Burma and contracted malaria, and I saw the awful attacks that brought on. He smoked, as many of his generation did and he was premature in the 1920's when care wasn't what it is today. My outlook changed. I did my day job professionally but I did not live for my job. When I retired in 2011 it was easy as I never labelled myself as my job, my work didn't consume me. You can't change your character and I never became carefree or live for the moment, and I still shunned parties and social gatherings where I could. But I took time for the important things in life.

Today was a sad day but life moves on. I saw my brother as we tidied the crem. I helped my daughter with some bits in her newly rented house as she starts independent life outside the family home. I saw my granddaughter who is fantastic. I have my wife's 50th celebrations this weekend, starting Friday. I saw Len yesterday.  Life is good.

I sold a story to Trevor Denyer. Stronghold is out from Samhain. I have a meeting with a film maker who wants me to write a script with him. Len is working on a follow up to Dark Of The Sun. We have other projects in the bubbling melting pot. Some will be joint but some will be individual. Life is good.

Value your dad, and your mum. I have so many small regrets when I was less than perfectly behaved towards them, and once they've gone it's too late.

Mick Sims August 8 2013