I turned to my father to distract myself from my own problems.
Whilst I was staying with him in May, a friend of my son’s phoned me to let me know that my son had fallen from a window the day before and was in hospital with a broken leg. I rushed home, blaming myself yet again for not having been there to protect my child.
The leg was severely broken – in fact smashed would be a better description and surgery followed to attach plates and pins to his crushed tibia and fibula. We were warned that it would take a long time for such a serious injury to heal and in the end it took more than a year.
Between looking after my son and trying to help my father, my personal issues were boxed up yet again. It took a lot of coaxing to get my father back to normal again and we started to plan a dream trip.
The idea was to travel to South Africa so that my father could visit his family there and we could have some time together to come to terms with the loss of my mother.
But no sooner did we manage to get him smiling again and he was struck down with Acute Myeloid Leukaemia. His fight with the disease only lasted two weeks and ended in June.
And the depression hit me full force. Everything came flooding back.
Nobody needed me anymore. My parents were both gone and my sons were all grown up. I was just a worthless waste of space who was nothing but trouble. Nobody deserved to be saddled with me. In public, I put on a happy face, telling everyone that I was fine. In private I was just a shell filled with pain.
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