My daddy's in hospital again because he drank too much milk when he was little and the calcium comes back to haunt him in the form of kidney stones about once a year. I drove him to Dublin yesterday because this time I'm able to drive, so he didn't have to find his own way just because he's too proud to ask his brothers for help. His car's parked across the road and I can see it out my window every time I look up, which is a lot, because I can't focus much at all. He's a taxi driver, and that sort of defines him, but I think it's in a good way. He likes to drive and he tells all of these anecdotes and you can tell that he's got a beautiful spark inside, however detached it seems sometimes. The last time he was in hospital, he was on morphine for nearly three weeks and as I was drinking a cup of tea with him, he was entertaining me with the smallest of small talk, just like we always do. And then he started talking about the man in the clouds, just like he switched, only he seemed to be completely the same and after a while he said that he was tired and without waiting for a reply, he got up and left. I remember how that used to seem so funny, but I'm enjoying confusion less and less and it's killing me that he's all alone and bored with nothing to do and because he's very finicky, very little to eat either. And I guess he's in pain, to boot. I know he'll be okay, but sometimes I'd like to sit with him and properly talk without distraction because sometimes he just seems so sad that it breaks my heart. I don't think that anybody else really sees it, but I do every day. I see it in his smiles and his anger and his walk and I wish I could ask him about it, or I wish he'd tell me about my almost sister because I'd still keep it a secret, it's just killing me that I only know so much. I used to think that things were simple - I suppose we're all born into that frame of mind - but he doesn't bring me Kinder Eggs anymore and nobody tells me I'm a daddy's girl anymore and I guess it's because nobody has any reason to. He watches TV late at night if he's not working and my mammy goes to bed without him all the time, and she gets up way before him the next day too. Sometimes I sit with him while the TV plays out its imagined memories and once he told me that he doesn't know how I deal with being in pain all the time, and that he couldn't do it if it were him, and all I could do was smile at him and tell him that I don't have much of a choice, and that I'll be okay sometime, eventually. I hope that he can be, too.