No way, no thanks, no how.

So we're not going to do IVF. We talked about it for a while and though I'm not really sure what the Big Guy thinks I think we ought to leave it. I think he'll do whatever I want, I mean obviously we're not doing it but if I wanted to then I think we would be because he'd be doing what I wanted. I wish I had more of a sense of what he truly wants for himself but I'm not really getting that at the moment.

Anyhoo, we shall keep on doing the deed and praying for a baby to come our way. I really want to have life inside me, someone else's life and am feeling more pangs and heartache now than last year. Naturally I s'pose. It's been 14 cycles and I've not seen so much as an evaporation line on any of the tests I've done. And yes I have been testing nearly every month. Maybe I'll stop doing that now (but I always say that at this point - I'm 4DPO and the urge to "just see" hasn't hit me yet).

As for the rest of life, my grandfather is still hanging on to it. His life I mean. And what an awful end this is for him. For a couple of years now he's been talking about dying (before he was diagnosed with a terminal disease) and he iterated that he never thought he'd be an invalid. Well now he is bedridden, doped to the eyeballs, wearing a nappy and being fed what meals he's awake for. He stopped eating and drinking last week for a day and a half and the family and docs thought it was the end. I dashed up to Brisbane to see him and by the time I'd arrived he'd regained consciousness and eaten dinner. Subsequently he's eaten and drunk every day.

While his cancer is painful and untreatable, it's not actively life-threatening (as in, not causing organ failure) and thus he lies waiting for the tender mercy of death. His heart, which has worried us all for that past 20 years, is ticking over as though there was nothing wrong with him so barring heart attack or dehydration nothing will kill him swiftly.

I sound so callous about this, at least I think I do. But I feel awful wanting his life to be done. Truly I do. It's just that I want his life to have quality and it doesn't. In January just before he was admitted to palliative care he threatened to jump over the balcony of the apartment if they dared to admit him. Two nights later he was delirious and unmanageable and was taken off by ambulance. This life is not the life he wanted. This end is not the end he wished for.

So I am wishing for an end for him. It's too much already. And at the same time I wish I had my Grampies back. I wish I was on Nellie sailing on the Pittwater and watching out for sandbars. I wish I was surfing in the big waves beside him and looking to see his strong body near mine. I wish I was being pushed on the swing and begging him to thrill me and push me higher. I wish I was listening to him tell me to accelerate into the corners while I drove us into his surgery for a day's work. I wish I was holding his hand and walking down the hot road to the shops. I wish I was escaping out of Mass with him and going to get a lemonade together. I wish I was listening to him sing Pavarotti in the kitchen as he makes spaghetti. I wish I was watching him lying on the beanbag with a book over his face having a nap. I wish I was listening to him tell me how proud he is of me and of how much I've managed.

I wish for anything with him but this.