If you've been following my blog for a while, you'll know the heartache I experienced as Dad suffered with cancer over the last few years. You'll also know that due to Car-T therapy, Dad survived, which was awesome, except for the damage both chemo and car-T did to his body. Cancer treatment is not gentle.

^{Dad, the year I was born.}

I have a heart tattooed on my left forearm which I got during this time. It was a reminder of how beautiful people are when you're struggling. Ultimately, human beings can be as nice as they are downright evil. Whenever I'm sad, I look at that and think about the support people gave me at that time. But it's also a big reminder for me personally about how grief is ultimately tied to love. This pain, this ache, this grief, this worry over people you love? This is just a sign of how much you darn well loved them. That changes thing for me, every time.

But damn, the pain. With the possibility of Dad being critically ill again (possibly mesothelioma - we won't know until the biopsy comes back), I'm staring down that heartache I went through a few years ago. It's just what we do, us children, when we are living through the moment our parents start dying - if we've been lucky enough to have parents that long, or parents you even want to mourn. I'm okay this time with saying goodbye, but I just don't want him being in pain. It's hard for my brain not to go towards that in the middle of the night in the darkness.

^{Dad, Vietnam, 1969}

And it's fucking unconscionable, that they send men to war, or that people have to live through war (thinking Palestine, right now) when it's no fault of theirs. For Dad, everything that's started going wrong with his body was because he did 5 months in Vietnam because his number came up. He didn't even fight. He had no PTSD. It didn't impact his life, until those chemicals ingested worked their damage and showed up in his bones and blood and lungs just when he's an old man that should be living his second life. That upsets me. It's unfair. But he did live, I suppose, and had a good life, until he didn't.

I worry a lot about Mum, too. They've been together since teenagers, and she adores him. She will have to learn to live in his absence. We all will. And that's okay - it happens. We think about it, we prepare for it, we talk about it, we know that death is the contract we make with the life, but still, it's not easy, is it?

This heart tattoo is also a reminder of my father, as if I need one. It reminds me to live well, and to die graciously. To be kind and good. To be a person one would want to grieve over.

Anyway, the biopsy might turn out okay. He might have another ten years in him. He jokes that as long as he has Endone, he'll be okay - if Keith Richards can do it, so can he.

Hoping like hell that's the case.