So I've been gone from Hive for a while and this is a large part of the reason why.
In early January, I’ve got a phone call from my brother telling me that that my dad had had another fall and had to go to hospital.
Apparently my dad actually asked to go to hospital and for him to ask to go to hospital that means it’s bad because he’s one of those tough old truck drivers who would never admit that he was in pain because he doesn't like putting people out- being an inconvenience.
In honour of dad's favourite fashion, we had a 'flannie' shirt funeral
My brother and his best mate Jai built a special platform for the back of the truck to give dad his last ride to Willie Nelson's "On the Road Again".
So I quickly packed my bag and raced up there which is almost a 10 hour journey and I expected only to stay for a few days but when I saw him in hospital I knew that I couldn't leave.
So I sat with him every afternoon until about 8/9pm just chatting, showing all these old photos, anything to get him motivated to want to come home, while my brother sat with him in the mornings.
As I sat with him, watching his face, even when he was asleep, I noticed that every time he moved his toe, his face would screw up in intense agony.
I watched him do this for a few days and during this time I’ve got the nurses to show me the bruising on him and he did look a lot like a Dalmatian dog, but I still couldn’t understand why he was in so much pain with just a few bruises and no breaks.
Dad with his first truck in 1952 at the age of 17- A fuel tanker!
Dad in his 'Natios'- National Service uniform in about 1952/3 with his dad (my Grandpa) to his left, his cousins and younger brothers to his right and a couple of his mates.
I commented to the nurses a few times that the amount of pain he was showing did not match his bruising, so they did some scans and found out that he had a fractured T12 and although they said it was an old fracture somewhere between two months and 12 months old, obviously a series of 6-7 falls in a month period had triggered a reaction.
Dad with his old #CommerKnocker #GoldenFleece Fuel tanker w8ith his girlfiend Lola (my mum)
Mum and Dad
During this time they had to try his warfarin with heparin to get his INR level back to normal.
For those of you who are not familiar with those medical terms, both warfarin and Heparin are blood thinners, but warfarin is the strongest of the lot and what they both do is control the speed at which your Blood coagulates- which is a test called INR which is just an international standard for the speed that they calculate.
https://www.heartfoundation.org.au/blog/what-is-an-inr-test
So therefore if it’s too fast then the blood is too thick and it won’t pump around the heart and the body fast enough. If it’s too slow then the blood is too thin and if he got cut or bruised, he could not stop bleeding.
Us at the beach
Australia's version of "Evel Knievel"
Unfortunately when dad was first admitted into hospital, his INR was at 10 which is far too thin, meaning he could’ve bled internally and died instantly.
They got it down from 10, to just 1- which is far too low, puting him at a risk of developing a blood clot.
So they took a few weeks titrating his INR- continuously measuring and adjusting the balance of the blood thinners, between the Heparin and the Wharfarin to get it back to its normal levels between 3 and 4.
Dad always entertaining everyone, from the kids to the adults.
With his best mate "Douchy" RIP Douchy. Now you and dad are continuing those antics up in heaven again.
Then the medical team realisd he was anaemic, so gave him a couple of bags of intravenous Iron.
Then they realised he didn’t have enough blood at all, so they gave him a couple of bags of intravenous Blood.
Then they realised he had an infection somewhere, so gave him a couple of bags of intravenous antibiotics.
"Gone Fishing"
Dad the Dog whisperer with Tyson, Rex and Bonnie.
Dad entertaining all the crew and guests on the Murray Princess Paddle steamer
During this time they also realise his blood count was still too high, indicating an infection somewhere in the body, but they couldn’t determine where it was, so they decided to do some upper body tests including his lungs and that’s when they found some small amounts of fluid in both his lungs and were 99 9% sure that that fluid contained the Mesothelioma cancer cells.
Cancer from being exposed to the deadly Asbestos fibers.
https://www.asbestos.com/mesothelioma
Dad as always the Larrikin at his 80th birthday party.
By this stage, Dad had weakened so much and he was in such a frail and fragile state that he was only eating ice cream for dinner and cornflakes for breakfast though he was still very thirsty and drinking a lot.
Because of his weak state he became completely incapacitated- bedridden needing 2 nurses to assist him to go to the toilet- to do everything, until eventually he couldn’t get out of bed anymore at all.
So about seven weeks after he was put into hospital, he left us to finally go where he wanted to be- back with mum and out of all that physical, emotional, mental pain that he’d been suffering for so long without her for the past 6 1/2 years.
Then I had to arrange his funeral and we could not find a minister for church Service to hold the funeral in the church that mum and dad had been married in over 60 years earlier, so we had to wait a few weeks until Celebrant was a available and held the service in the chapel of the local crematorium.
We also had a graveside Service, where he was buried on top of mum and they were finally back together forever.
I stayed up there another couple of weeks while everything got settled and to make sure that my brother and my dad's Little dog Spilkey were okay.
So I'm sure that from all of these photos, you can see just how much of an incredible father who somehow managed to devote a monumental amount of time to his family and friends, even though dad spent so many hours on the road, driving trucks, delivering the necessities of life to people.
There was nothing more important in the world to dad than the 5 Fs.
Family, Friends, Fun, Flannelette check shirts and the F100 ute and one of his favourite things to do with all of them together.
Dad gave us the best of everything and in particular, gave us the best active and seriously fun up bringing that every other kid could only dream of.
And those were the days- the 70's and 80's in Australia.
The best time for a kid to grow up in.
We were often packing up the esky and the f100 for a day trip to a beach or lake somewhere, or waterskiiing down the river, camping at Bournda, waterskiing on Wallagoot lake and prawning at night. And he was always entertaining everyone around the campfire with his antics- as I'm sure you can see from the photos.
He was always making sure that we were fed, clothed and taken care of and despite there being some hard financial times, we always had the best presents and the best parties.
Dad was the most generous man I’ve ever met and never hesitated to help someone.
He was also the humblest man I’ve ever met, had no ego and there was no need to rave on about his help for he was embarrassed by praise, because to him, helping people should not be praised, it should just be done and not for any accolades.
He was an incredible man, a truly outstanding human being and a fantastic father.
I returned to Melbourne a couple of weeks ago, straight back to the daily grind, but at least now I’m back in my own home, feeling able to get back into a creative space both physically and mentally and I’m so happy to have the Hive to come home to again to see all of my Online friends and family too.
So One last thing that I would like to say is that during the wake, I had quite a few people tell me that I had lifted the bar for Slideshows at funerals, as I had not put music on dad's slideshow (which nearly didn't happen at all but that is another story), I recorded the eulogy to the photos in the slideshow and had a few recordings of dad telling funny stories in there too.
I didn't do it to lift the bar, I did it because a few years ago, my best friend told me that after her father died, her mum and her started forgetting what his voice sounded like and she said that as a professional photographer for over 30 years, she had thousands of photos of her dad, but no recording of his voice.
From that moment on, every time I went home to see dad, I would get all the old photos up on my laptop and I would ask him questions about them, or he would just naturally start telling me the stories to them and I thought that this is the perfect present for all of his future descendants too.
So I encourage everyone to record your loved ones- young or old because you never know when they'll be gone and you'll forget their voice.
Rest in Peace together now my wonderful, amazing, beautiful parents Lola and Johnny. You are both sorely missed by so many and will be for a long time to come.
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