Take Two
13 August

Upstairs at the moment, Ross is busy working on the Order of Service for his grandad's funeral next week.

It hardly seems just over a month since I was doing exactly the same thing.

We got the news of the death last Thursday. Ross's first reaction was simply to say "Good". I know that feeling. It's a way of acknowledging the simple relief that someone you love is no longer in pain and distress.

Ralph died with Ross's mum and uncle present. Sam, Ross's brother, was also there. Since we'd been to see him last Tuesday and Wednesday, most of the family had been able to visit him so he got the chance to say his last goodbyes.

I've been saddened to think that my dear old dad did not have that chance. I was going to say that he died alone but that is not true. There were two of the Nursing Home staff with him and they, in their way, had become his new family. Certainly, towards the end, dad recognised and responded to their voices not mine or mum's or Linda's. That he died in the company of people he knew is a further testimony to the sort of care that he received there.

In the days that have followed I have also become aware of my own sense of relief as well. Back in January, I wrote a list of all the challenges that were facing me at that point. Pretty much now, they have all been resolved. The two deaths take away acres of worry and concern and Ross's health has settled for the moment. I've maybe got a space of time where I can begin to settle and focus on things for the future.

Ross and I need to think seriously about the future. We need to do something positive about our home. Legally, it is mine and mine alone. It could be argued that Ross has merely been living here rent free for over a decade. So, we need to do something about a Tenants in Common agreement. To have any binding effect, it needs to have been in existence for a while. Given my recent experience, I can see an advantage to Ross with possible help with long-term care costs in the future. As long as he continues to live in this house, the council wouldn't be able to include its value in the means test if I went into long-term care.

We probably also need to set our finances and my pensions on a more stable footing through a Civil Contract. I suppose that one of the things that I'm taking from the last few months is that my dad got things right by planning for the future long before it arrived and he lost any ability he might have had to influence its course.

On a more down-to-earth note, in the back garden, the raised vegetable bed has demonstrated that it is going to be a great success well into the future. I've just planted some potatoes which should be ready for Christmas and, in the meantime, we are still feasting off the broad beans and the runner beans are just coming into season with plenty of orangey-brown flowers promising more beans to come.

Also out there in the garden, Ross's tactic of growing bedding plants from seed have given us a riot of colour with Marigolds, Nasturtiums, Mesembryanthemums and many more. The buddleja, I'm happy to say, is covered in Peacock butterflies. Jemima is hunting them with a passion.

Meanwhile, at the front of the house, we've stripped the paint off the downstairs bay bay window and taken it right back to the wood. We've been discovering along the way how the damage to the parapet at the top has been allowing water into the fabric of the building and so we've been making good the damage to the wood and the mortar and the lintels as we go. It's a massive job by our standards but, if we left it, it would be an even bigger job for a building contractor after the whole structure became unsafe.

Mind you, judging by today's performance, my days of pulling trolleys laden with ten bags of builders' sand and three bags of cements around B&Q on my own are definitely coming to an end. The idea of coping with a hernia now on top of everything else does not bear thinking about.

We've also tried to give ourselves some treats by watching a selection of catch up films courtesy of cable. First up was Warm Bodies,a rom com retelling of the Romeo and Juliet story with zombies. It was a pleasant enough film and, even if he was a member of the undead, Nicholas Hoult is always easy on the eye as he so ably proved in A Single Man.

Trance was directed by Danny Boyle who brought us last year's opening ceremony for the Olympics. It was a convoluted story of heist and whodunnit. Nobody turned out to be what they where supposed to be like. James McAvoy is always easy on the eye as he so ably proved in The Last King of Scotland.

Ever since I read that David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas was to be made into a film I have both dreaded and eagerly anticipated watching it. It is such a literary book that I could not conceive of how the translation could be made. As it turns out it wasn't too bad at all. Like the book, it's complicated and I should like to see it again sometime (that's probably about the best tribute I can give the production).

Of all the cast, Ben Wishaw was the easiest on the eye.

He's been a prominent actor for some time appearing more recently in Skyfall as Q and on BBC's The Hour.

He also, apparently, entered into a civil partnership with Australian composer Mark Bradshaw some time last year. Well done, that man.

And finally, I caught up with the Glyndebourne production of Hippolyte et Aricie by Rameau courtesy of downloads hosted by The Guardian. I am glad that I watched it through although I have to confess that I only managed it in half hour bursts. I liked the inventiveness of the production finding a modern equivalent for Baroque spectacle but I do find the French style to be very declamatory and high flown much as is the case with the verse of Corneille and Racine. In other words, it was good but I'm glad that I hadn't invested the time and effort to see it in Sussex.

As I've been catching up with this Journal, I've been acknowledging to myself how important it is for me to write. How thinking things through and making connections is one of the things that helps to stabilise me and allow me to centre rather than drift.

I've also got to acknowledge that I couldn't have written all the things about my dad's dementia if I'd tried to write them concurrently as events unfolded. Writing now, a year later, has been exhausting and draining but in a good way. I've been able to recall events with great emotional immediacy and to integrate them in a way that wouldn't have been possible at the time. Instead of looking back at things happening at me, I can see a development and a story that is a part of me.

I've also got a very strong sense of how much that is deeply, deeply emotional has happened; how, in the space of two short years, there have been challenges to do with home, work, partner, family, livelihood, intellect, self-image and yet I haven't totally buckled.

I started looking back thinking that I would be reviewing a constant catalogue of misfortune and desperate straights. I've somehow arrived at a point where all that has happened simply feels like a part of all that is to come and here and now is a place that I can inhabit rather than attempt to escape from.