Escaping - Just for a little while

So this year so far has been a tough one. There can be no denying that. I still have my moments when I think I'm going to wake up and find out it's all been some really horrible dream.

When I think that yesterday was 7 months since Dad left us so suddenly, it shakes me to the core. How can life have just kept going on as usual for so long when he's not here any longer? But I have to confess that the good moments are slowly starting to outweigh the bad. And the bad moments are often touched by a kind of happiness.

This last week I've been escaping from everything. Myself and the other half took a camping trip up to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (which is quite possibly one of the most beautiful places I've been). We found ourselves in a beautiful campground, miles from anything, with no internet and no phones. It was a kind of heaven.

 

But when he disappeared off to get firewood from a little store down the road I had one of the bad moments. Camping was and still is something I associate with Dad. He loved to camp. He was a Scout leader for many years and there were a number of Scout camps he took us kids along on.

 

So sitting there in that stunning campground, with only really the sounds of the wind in the trees and the river running along the back of our site, I couldn't help but think of Dad. I couldn't help but think that I was in a place he would have loved, doing something he would have loved, and I wouldn't get to tell him about it. I wouldn't get to send him pictures of the tent, and tell him how it ended up being way bigger than we expected and how we managed to put it up backwards. I could picture his reaction, he would have laughed and told me some funny story about some scout camp I could barely remember, or given me some tips for 'next time'.

 

But even though I was sad, and I cried a little, sitting there on my own under the trees, listening to the river, I was also smiling. Smiling as I thought about Dad, and his stories and how happy he would have been that I was out there camping at all.

 

It's getting easier to remember the good things, easier to deal with the sad parts. I know that it's never going to be easy, but it's getting better.

 

But this escape was more than just about Dad, and dealing with everything that goes with it. It was also a nice reminder that I can go without internet and phones if I need to. Something I have to admit I was starting to doubt. Neither of our phones work in the U.S.A, and internet was out of the question, so it was just us, no distractions. And it was heavenly.

 

 

 

Now, don't go thinking that I'm about to dump all my modern technology. I can do without it, and enjoyed being without it, for a while, but it also reminded me how much I rely on it. My family is scattered across the globe, as are my friends, and as much as that is by choice, it also means that the internet is the only thing that connects us. Even if it is just a 'like' on a picture on Facebook, it helps me feel as though my sister, my mother and my brother (along with all the rest) are still a little involved in my life, and me in theirs.

 

So have no fear, Facebook, I am not abandoning you just yet.

 

But escaping from technology, from people, from life itself, just for a little while, is probably the best thing I've done all year.

 

I highly recommend it.

A little something special

So, today is six months since my Dad passed away. It seems almost impossible that it's been that long.

 

I wanted to write a post today in his memory, but  I was struggling to know what to write. To be honest, I feel like I've already said what I can say.

 

Then I was thinking about one of the last conversations I had with my Dad face to face - and it was about The Last Knight. It hadn't been long published and I had been quietly shocked that Dad actually really liked it. Not just 'my daughter wrote it so I have to like it' but honestly, really liked it. According to Mum he read it cover to cover three times or more between it's release and when he passed away.

 

But I digress. In this conversation I asked him who his favourite character was (expecting him to say Lance, or Cara, or Wyn) and he surprised me by saying Percy. Who I have to admit is probably my favourite character too.

 

So just for you Dad, a little Percy scene that I wrote a while back and I never planned on seeing the light of day. It's just a bit of silly fun, but I hope everyone has as much fun reading it as I did writing it.

 

The foil crinkled in his hands as he turned it around. The bright colours on the front made it hard to imagine this was some kind of food. He turned it again and shook it. The contents rattled.

Percy glanced up at Merlin. “Are you sure this is food?”

“Yes, Percival,” Merlin sighed. “It’s food. They just – do things a little differently here.”

The bag popped slightly as he opened it and the smell of some kind of fried goodness rose up out of it. He breathed in. He glanced into the bag and found a pile of thin, crisp bits of what looked like fried potato. But why were they cut so thin? He sighed in disappointment. He wanted meat, and lots of it, slow roasted over an open fire pit, dripping in grease. He wanted vegetables, also swimming in grease, but big chunks of them that he could stab with his knife. Not these strange, thin little bits of nothing.

And he was hungry, damn it. Of course, according to Gwain and Lancelot, he was always hungry. It wasn’t true. He wasn’t hungry when he was sleeping, or fighting. Just – the rest of the time.

The bag was almost too small for his big hand as he reached in for one of the ‘crisps’. It did smell good, he couldn’t deny that.

Lancelot was laughing from across the table. “Just eat it already. It’s not going to change no matter how long you stare at it.”

Percy glowered at him. It was all right for Lancelot. He seemed to have fitted into this new world quite easily, but the whole place still felt strange to Percy. The clothes were stiff and uncomfortable. He missed his armour. He felt naked without his armour. And there was stone everywhere, the forests he loved were gone, swallowed up by cities that seemed impossibly big. As for the people, he found them hard to believe. Why, just a few moments ago he’d seen a man come into the room in front of a woman, and not hold the door open for her. Unfathomable. He’d considered challenging the man for the affront, but he didn’t think Gwain or Lancelot would approve. Besides, the man had looked so small and weak it wouldn’t have been a very fair fight.

He sighed and looked back down at the thin piece of potato in his hand. He wasn’t sure he liked this new world one little bit.

With a final sigh of resignation he shoved the ‘crisp’ into his mouth and crunched down. His eyes widened in surprise as flavour flooded across his tongue, salty and fatty. Damn, that was good!

He demolished the rest of the packet in a matter of seconds and reached for another, then a third.

He only stopped when he heard Lancelot and Gwain laughing at him. He shot them a dirty look. Let them laugh.

Maybe this new world wouldn’t be so bad after all…

24 Years Later

The 2^nd of August. What a strange day. My father ‘celebrated’ the 2^nd of August every year for the last 24. This will be the first year he doesn’t. As he’s no longer here to commemorate it, I suppose it’s down to me.

It always struck me as an odd day to celebrate when I was a child. Why on earth would my father want to celebrate the day? But now I’m older I think I understand. Dad wasn’t celebrating the day, he was celebrating the days, weeks and years that came after it. He was celebrating the fact that he lived through it.

For those in the know, who understand the significance of the date, you can skip this bit. But for those who don’t, allow me to explain.

In July of 1990 the Middle East was in a little bit of turmoil. Saddam Hussein had massed his troops along the Kuwaiti border, threating invasion. It was supposedly about territory, but really, it was about oil. The rest of the world didn’t pay too much attention. It’s sabre rattling, they said. He’ll never actually invade, they said. They were wrong of course.

Also in July 1990, I was on holiday in Cyprus.  We went away most summers. Kuwait could be unbearably hot those last few months of summer, and it is absolutely no fun being a kid and being stuck in the AC. And so my parents would take myself, Ian and Jo away on holiday. Cyprus wasn’t exactly cool, but it was a hell of a lot cooler than Kuwait. Dad could never stay the whole time though. He had a job to get back to. So towards the end of the holiday he would pack up his bag and say goodbye for the next few weeks. We didn’t think too much of it. After all, we’d be back in Kuwait soon enough, and we still had Mum.

Then came the 2^nd of August. It was the same as any other summer day. We played in the pool. We ate copious amounts of ice cream. My older brother and sister teased me. I told Mum on them and got them into trouble. Nothing unusual. But of course, we didn’t have a TV in the holiday home, we never listened to the radio. How could we know anything was wrong?

But in another part of the world, everything was wrong. Dad had woken to a confusing, half asleep phone call from his boss.

“Don’t come to work. Stay inside.”

My father was never a morning person, so I can well imagine him struggling to make sense of it. But of course, he asked the most important question.

“Why?”

And the answer. I have so many regrets since my father passed away, but one of the worst is that I never asked him more about these moments of his life. Like what really passed through his mind the moment he got the reply. Whether he was scared? Whether he thought about us? Or Mum?

The reply? “The Iraqi’s have invaded. They’ve already taken the city.”

Dad was officially in a country at war. And his family were a few thousand miles away, with no idea.

Eventually he got a phone call through. He finally reached Mum at the poolside bar where we used to spend our days. I’ll never forget. How can you? I was seven years old, I didn’t have a clue what was going on, I only knew that something was horribly, horribly wrong.

I could tell you the rest of the story, but this blog post would be the size of a novel. I will write it down one day, I’ve always said I would.

But I can give you the basics. I saw my father at the end of July. The next time I saw him was at the school gates, surrounded by sobbing parents and the media, over 4 months later. With the wildest, shaggiest beard and hair.

He’d been in hiding, living in fear of being caught by the Iraqi soldiers, for most of that, but he had eventually been found and arrested at gunpoint and shipped off to Bagdad to be a part of the human shield. But in between he had helped organise convoys out of the country to get women and children to safety. He had opened his home to other men in hiding like himself, where they hid in the AC ducts every time the soldiers came calling. He had opened his home to others too. He wrote a small ‘newspaper’ that was passed around hand to hand by those in hiding and the resistance.

He was, quite simply, what every girl believes her father to be. A hero. Not the crazy, action hero type. But simply a quiet, brave man, who did what he felt needed to be done.

So this year I’m going to celebrate the 2^nd of August too. Because he survived it. Because he was a brave and wonderful man. Because I got 24 more years with him, when there was a time we didn’t know if we’d ever see him again.

If only I had a Keo.

Miss you every day, Dad. Xxx

 

(A/N – The memories of a 7 year old child are not the most accurate…and you must allow for a little poetic licence)

Happy Father's Day!

So today is a day of excitement and sadness.

I am obviously incredibly excited to be able to finally say that Chasing Freedom is now on sale. This book that's been ten years in the making has hit the shelves.

Sad because it's Father's Day. Because I will not get to tell my father today how much I love him. Though I hope he knows.

And so Chasing Freedom has become my last Father's Day gift to him, dedicated in his memory. Dad loved to read, everything and anything, so hopefully he would have liked this. He also started writing a book once. I think he only got about a chapter down, but I read it, and it was brilliant. It will always make me sad that he never finished it. Maybe one day I'll find a way to incorporate that chapter of his into something of mine. That way he'll be published too!

So I want to share with you all the dedication at the beginning of Chasing Freedom:

This one’s for you, Dad.

I wish you’d had the chance to read it.

With any luck they have Kindles in Heaven

 XOXO

 

And I will add to it - 'Happy Father's Day, Dad. This one really is for you.'

 

 

 

 

Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KZZXDAY
Nook: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/chasing-freedom-nicola-s-dorrington/1119720901?ean=2940046003086
All Other Formats: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/446951

Three Months

Dear Dad,

It’s three months today. Can you believe that? I know I can’t.

It’s strange really. I think that a part of me still believes I’m going to wake up one morning and it will have been a dream. It doesn’t seem real.

The truth is, I forget sometimes. It’s not that I don’t miss you, but for nearly three years now I’ve lived on the other side of the world. You weren’t a part of my day-to-day life. I didn’t see you every day, or speak to you all the time. So it’s easy to forget. It’s easy to think that you are just ‘over there’ doing your thing and one day soon I’ll pick up the phone and speak to you and fill you in on my life.

And in a way it’s great, because I don’t have to be sad all the time. I don’t have to miss you constantly. I can pretend – just for a little while – that nothing has changed.

Then it will hit me all of a sudden. I’ll remember that you’re not just a phone call away anymore. I’ll remember that hearing your voice is something I won’t get to do anymore.

The trouble is, at that moment it’s like losing you all over again. All the pain, all the sadness come rushing back in one massive wave.

And I’m left wondering if those days of ‘pretend’ are worth the days when I remember all over again?

I know they say that grief is a process and something you just have to work through, but I’m not sure I’m ever going to get used to remembering that you’re not around anymore. It feels like I’m never going to be able to think about losing you without the tears, and the ache that makes it hard to breathe.

Yet on the other hand, perversely, remembering you makes me happy too. And it’s the silly things. Like doing trivia night at the local bar and suddenly thinking about you being Quiz Master in Abu Dhabi. ‘Rule #1 – the quiz master is always right. Rule #2  - in the event the quiz master is wrong, refer to rule #1’. Or eating Easter Eggs and remembering how you could always manage to make yours last for weeks longer than the rest of us, and when ours ran out you would be quietly smug about it.

So I’m trying not to forget you. I’m trying not to simply block you from my mind just to make it easier. I try and talk about you as much as I can. In fact, I think I’m turning into you – I talk way too much! But three months feels like forever and yet no time at all.

You may no longer be just a phone call away, but you will always, always be just a thought away.

With love, always.

"I'm fine"

“I’m fine.”

Two little words (or three if you’re being fastidious) yet somehow it’s the biggest lie I’ve ever told.

“I’m fine.”

It’s the answer to most questions I’m asked these days and part of me wonders – if I keep saying it long enough will it become true?

At what point after losing someone you love – someone you can never replace – do the words “I’m fine” stop being a lie and finally become reality? A month? Six months? A year?

At this point I find it hard to imagine there ever being a time when I can say the words “I’m fine” without lying. Because it seems that there will always be this nagging feeling at the back of my mind that nothing will ever be quite ‘fine’ again.

Some people have told me not to tell the lie. “When people ask you how you’re doing, just tell them the truth,” they say.

I can picture the conversation now.

“How are you doing?” Someone asks.

“Well…” I reply. “Since you asked…actually…”

And three hours later their face is a fixed grimace of horror, and they swear a vow to never ask me how I’m doing again.

The truth is, it’s not something I can share with people around me. I’m not going to say nobody understands what I’m going through. Because that would be a lie too – I’m not the first person to lose a father far too young and unexpectedly and I won’t be the last. It is true though that we all grieve in our own ways – so the way I’m feeling isn’t something anyone else can quite understand – not fully.

My normal routine for heart-break and sadness is to let it all out on paper. My books are where the “I’m fine” lie ends and the truth pours out. It’s where I lay bare my feelings, and rant against the unfairness of the world.

For some reason this time I’m struggling. The “I’m fine” lie is even translating to the page where I play it safe and stick to the easy parts of what I’m writing. My characters are currently living in happy la-la land populated by unicorns and puppies because I can’t face writing anything real. Yes, I know what people are thinking – I write fantasy filled with knights and dragons and fey folk, none of it is real – but the emotions of my characters, those are real because they come from somewhere inside me, and right now I can’t bring myself to make them feel pain. I’ve got far too much of my own to deal with.

So I guess for now I’ll stick with “I’m fine.” I’ll keep repeating the lie in person and on paper and I guess that one day – without even realising it – I won’t be lying anymore.

One day I will be fine. Well. Fine-ish anyway.