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Well, if you've been listening to me on Bahrain Radio you will know that I'm back in Bahrain after a traumatic, sad and very important time in England.
I was working when I received a much dreaded but also anticipated call from my mum (I was actually on stage at a function about to bring on a troupe of fire-eaters, so it all felt just a bit unreal at first). My dad, Eddie, has been ill and getting slowly worse for several years and was bedridden for most of the last year with my mum looking after him.
On the day she called me, a nurse had been round to see dad and tend to some bed-sores that were not getting better and had told mum that he was really very ill and (you won't believe this) asked: "Do you know a funeral director?"
I can't imagine anything more tactless and uncaring. Mum, of course, rang me in tears and when I got away from the function I went straight home to try to get a last minute flight out of Bahrain that night.
Now that is another story, but I managed to get the last seat on a plane at 1.40am and turned up at London with no available connecting flights to Manchester. So I jumped on a bus a little bleary-eyed at 8am to carry on the journey.
Mum picked me up from the bus station. We got back to the house and I saw my dad.
He had been put into another room to accommodate an electric bed. I started talking to him and his eyes looked straight into mine and to my great relief there was recognition. You see, my dad also suffered from Alzheimer's, a terrible illness where you forget people and things. Over the years we have had a few bad things happen due to this illness.
I'd read up about this disease and a report had said that music is one of the last of the memories to fade, so I brought in a little stereo system and put on some of my dad's favourite old tunes including Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, Matt Munro and also some classical pieces. I blasted out the sound and his hand came out from under the sheet and started waving in time to the music. I can't tell you how very grateful I felt to get to spend this time with him.
My dad was a great talker (so, no wonder where I got it from) but sadly his vocal chords had gone and he could no longer speak. But he made a huge effort to say something to me after I told him how much we all loved him.
I couldn't make out what he actually said but the look in his eyes was enough. I think he understood and wanted to say the same back. He died three days later peacefully at home.
It still felt so unbelievable that his time had come.
Thankfully, for mum and me, there was a lot of running around to do. Things like registering the death with the coroner, also finding a funeral director and contacting relatives - the list was endless.
My mum is from a large family of 10 brothers and sisters and we went round visiting lots of them.
My Uncle Matt came to us and said something that had me in tears, that Mary and Eddie's was the original love story; they met when mum was 17 and dad was 20 and they had been together all that time. It would have been their 55th wedding anniversary last Friday.
What I admire about most about my mum and dad's marriage is that they actually worked many years together; having run a hotel, apartments, a fish 'n' chip shop and a post office. We moved around so much when I was a kid I thought that I was a gypsy!
I heard more and more stories of what dad was like when he was younger. In fact something that blew me away was when someone told me about when he was in his 20s he went to a wedding as a guest and took five records with him and proceeded to get people up dancing to the tunes of the time with waltzes, quicksteps and foxtrots! So he was the original DJ!
Now I know where I got it from and really wonder about why my dad always used to say to me: "When are you going to get a proper job?"
On the day of the funeral we played a song my dad used to sing by Frankie Laine called 'I Believe' as I, and two cousins, Martin and Michael, and my uncle Joe carried dad's coffin into the crematorium.
The crematorium was just a few streets away from the house where my dad had been born, though it's not there any more. After the Rev John Fairclough gave a lovely talk all about my dad and his life we sang a hymn that was sung on mum and dad's wedding day.
As the curtains closed we played Nat King Cole's 'Smile'. Afterwards, we all went to one of the oldest pubs in Lancashire called the Boars Head where everybody reminisced and chatted.
Wendy and Hannah had arrived a few days earlier and Hannah really impressed everybody with her knowledge of Arabic - counting to 10 and also coming out with all the Arabic names of animals that she knew and even teaching my relatives how to write the letters. My dad would have really enjoyed that.
During the following week we kept ourselves very busy. We went back to the crematorium to collect the flowers we had forgotten and had a good walk through the gardens which were very beautiful.
Hannah had never really seen gravestones before and was fascinated and asked all sorts of questions that were both difficult and healing to answer.
Wendy and Hannah left on a Friday morning a week after the funeral. Afterwards mum and I went to Blackely Cemetery where my nana is buried along with a couple of my uncles.
Later Mum said: "Let's go and have lunch at the Three Arrows".
I looked at the menu while mum went to wash her hands. When she came back the sound system was switched on and 'Smile' from Nat King Cole started playing.
We both shed tears and mum said: "so dad's sat here having a meal with us!"
Now I'm back in Bahrain with all my memories and a lot of reflection.
All my love to everybody.
Keep Happy,
Kevin
