Lost

In April last year I wrote about losing my blue swimsuit and how my friend blamed that loss for everything bad that was happening in the world, from her thyroid becoming under active to the Covid pandemic!

I bought a new, identical blue swimsuit and was delighted to be able to buy a smaller size, but it always puzzled us what had become of the original one.

A couple of days ago I was looking for tights. I needed them because I was preparing to wear a dress……something I haven’t done for a long time. 

I wish I could write that I was putting on a dress for a wedding or a christening or another happy event. Unfortunately I wasn’t. I was putting on a dress for a funeral. Not just any funeral. My dad’s funeral. My wonderful, handsome, witty dad. I can’t quite believe we’ve lost him. He had Parkinson’s Disease and Lewy body dementia so had been slowly deteriorating for years, but the end came very quickly. It seems like one moment he was here and the next he was gone. We miss him. 

When I was looking for those tights to wear to my dad’s funeral service, I found my lost blue swimsuit. It was caught down the back of a drawer in the base of our son’s divan bed. The bed used to be ours and I stored my sea swim gear in that drawer before we moved it into our son’s room.

I hope that my friend’s theory was right and that by finding that swimsuit I will be able to reverse all the bad things that have happened in the last 18 months. Maybe her thyroid will rectify itself.  Maybe there will even be a cure for Covid. 

Unfortunately, the one thing I want most, can’t happen. My dad can’t come back. My husband’s father-in-law cannot come back. Our son’s granddad can’t come back. Our lives are irrevocably changed. No amount of superstition or lucky clothes can change the loss we are feeling. 

As I swim in the sea tomorrow morning, I will think of my dad. I will remember him sitting in the cafe with my hubby; the two of them watching us in the water and discussing what a ridiculous pastime dad thought it was. I will let the waves wash away my tears and imagine my twinkly eyed dad, laughing at the sight of me in the water.

“No-one is actually dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away.” (Terry Pratchett)