Free The First Time I Said Goodbye by Claire Allan Page B

sometimes you just learn to live with things.”

    * * *

    The day my father was told his cancer was terminal was the worst day of my life. It was worse in many ways than the day he died because we had to face the great big unknown entity that was preparing to say goodbye to each other. How do you do that? How do they expect you to do that? How does anyone expect you to live with the knowledge that someone you love so very intensely is going to suffer and fade out in front of your very eyes? And I was expected to keep going – to keep grinning as people came in to place their cupcake or their celebration cakes order and all the while I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs to just stop, have some respect and start believing in the cruelty of life rather than the beauty of it.
    When Elise kindly, and with a great deal of bravery, took me aside and told me my grief was not conducive to the cake-selling business and she would be only too happy to offer some support to me, I sagged with relief. I hung up my apron, probably not a minute too soon, and I stopped pretending. I gave in to the grief – at least in my private moments. And I would visit my father every day and bring him just one cupcake – whatever flavour he wanted. He would make his very best effort to eat it and to start with he managed well. As he grew weaker he left more and more but we kept up the pretence. We kept up my baking this cupcake every night and bringing it to him. He would smile and tell me I was the best baker in town. And I would smile and tell him he was the best daddy in the world and he would pick at a few crumbs and promise to eat more later. We never let on to each other that we knew he wouldn’t, or couldn’t eat it. That we knew it would go in the bin or my mother would have a small piece with her evening tea. We knew that, but we learned to live with the charade.
    Craig had tried, gently and perhaps not so gently at times, to tell me that what I was doing was futile and maybe I should just forget about the cupcake tradition. But I couldn’t do that. You can’t do that. You have to keep living even when you feel as if every ounce inside of you is dying. You have to do something to keep up the pretence that it is just normal and that life isn’t cruel. You have to find your ways of coping.
    Sometimes, you just learn to live with things.

    * * *

    Sunday lunch involved an impossibly small table with eight chairs crammed around it. Elbows speared ribs, hands brushed together while reaching for the salt and pepper shakers and shoulders were hunched forward to make us as small as possible.
    My mother, despite her late night, looked radiant at the top of the table. She sipped from a wineglass (I was on water – water was a decent enough drink for me after the night before) and revelled in the conversation. My head, still fuzzy, drifted in and out of the patter, occasionally glancing towards Sam to check that he was okay. He seemed fine. He dipped in and out of the conversation seamlessly while his mother smiled, almost beatific at the sight of her only son. He was talking old movies and doing manly Humphrey Bogart impressions while his mother laughed and jostled those beside her.
    “He’s a star,” she muttered, over and over again. “My boy. Such a talent. Such a catch.”
    I glanced at Sam and he looked at me, eyebrows raised just a little as if to say ‘I told you so’.
    “You must have some lovely single friends, Annabel?” she asked.
    And of course I did. I had Simon and William, either of whom would make a perfect partner for Sam, I would bet, but I figured that was not what she would want to hear.
    “I do, but it would be a bit of a commute for a date,” I offered, spearing a green bean with my fork and making great yummy noises so that hopefully she would change the topic of conversation.
    “I suppose,” Dolores huffed. “And one member of the family running off to America in search of the love of their life was tough