{"id":183,"date":"2005-12-31T22:47:29","date_gmt":"2005-12-31T22:47:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php\/2005\/12\/31\/two_mince_pies\/"},"modified":"2005-12-31T22:47:29","modified_gmt":"2005-12-31T22:47:29","slug":"two_mince_pies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/?p=183","title":{"rendered":"Two mince pies and tea"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Coming down to this house reminds me of the first time we came here.<\/p>\n<p>It was just after my 86 year old Dad had been diagnosed with Lung Cancer.<br \/>\nI spent a lot of time on the front porch here talking to my Dad that year.<br \/>\nWhile we were down here he was actually quite well. One day I called he had<br \/>\njust been up on the roof of the house fixing a leak.<\/p>\n<p>On the way down here that year I realised I had left the power supply for<br \/>\nmy laptop at home. Because we had left a couple of other things I decided<br \/>\nto drive back a couple of days later to pick them up. The day I drove back<br \/>\nwas the day Dad and Mum had been to see the specialist. The prognosis was<br \/>\nnot good. There was nothing they could do at all. The position of the cancer<br \/>\nmeant that surgery was not an option and both chemotherapy and radiotherapy<br \/>\nwould make Dad worse at his age. He just had to go home and die. There was<br \/>\none thing the doctor could do. The growth was pressing on his adrenal gland<br \/>\nand reducing his own supply of adrenalin (don&#8217;t hold me exactly to the details)<br \/>\nso the doctor was able to give him adrenalin tablets that would give him energy.<\/p>\n<p>As I was back in Melbourne on the afternoon after Dad had been to the doctor<br \/>\nso I dropped in to see them. Dad opened the door. He had just made cups of<br \/>\ntea for himself and Mum and on the coffee table were two mince pies. It was<br \/>\nlovely sorrow. Mum and Dad married for 59 years. Dad knew he had weeks to<br \/>\nlive and they were celebrating with a cup of tea and a mince pie. At least<br \/>\nthey were trying to celebrate and try to make everything go back to the happy<br \/>\ntimes they had before they heard this news. The drank their tea but the mince<br \/>\npies remained uneaten when I left.<\/p>\n<p>Less than a month later he was gone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Coming down to this house reminds me of the first time we came here. It was just after my 86 year old Dad had been diagnosed with Lung Cancer. I spent a lot of time on the front porch here talking to my Dad that year. While we were down here he was actually quite [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}