Thursday was the first anniversary of father's death. My younger sister Christine is still taking it bad but she lives in America and was always daddy's little girl. What did surprise me a bit was how well mother took it so I had a chat with her about how she felt and while missing him terribly she is happy that his personal fight with multiple sclerosis is over, that he is no longer in constant pain nor confined 24/7 to a bed in a small room in a nursing home. That was no life for a man who lived out in the open, working the land until he passed his HGV test and got a job driving waste skip lorries for the local council (still keeping his own company most of the time).
So mother and I still celebrate a live lived. Yes, we miss him but his final years were nothing but physical torment for a man who lived to be free and do things his way in his own time. All his working life he worked with his hands, but in the latter years, following medical retirement, he couldn't control them so could do nothing. I know my parents planned retirement as a perpetual road trip, they saved for a motor-home and wanted to just drive where the whim or fancy took them but they never got to do that. As a man who lived so honestly and who would do anything to help anybody, his final years were cruel and painful. Those that knew and loved him will never forget him. RIP Arthur James Cooper 31-08-1932 to 19-12-2012.
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