A DEATH TO DIE FOR (11 page)

I have always said that if the sun comes up and you’re still breathing then you have to do another day, and this felt like one that would be a struggle, I wasn’t looking forward to the meeting with the lady from the hospice nor with the dual coating of cream so I had a bad head on me when Helen arrived.

I completed my ablutions with little conversation between us and having dressed I sat in the chair whereupon she produced another tranche of letters from her bag but I couldn’t really see the point of dealing with them today and put them unopened on top of the cupboard.

My mood did not improve any when the cream applicator extraordinaire arrived so I just sat there in grim silence while he did his work, Helen realizing that she couldn’t perk me up said that she would go and get herself a cup of tea and come back later on for the meeting.

Directly she had gone I felt guilty that I let my own vexations come between us, Helen was having to bear more than her fair share of the weight of everything that was piling down on us and I wanted her to come back quickly so that I could say that I was sorry, she must have prolonged her cup of tea because she did not return until just before the lady from the hospice was due, I could see that she had been crying.

I got off of the bed and held her close with my right arm and said that I was deeply sorry, she put her hand on my chest and lifted her head and kissed me, my crabbiness fell away and we waited for our visitor.

At the appointed time there was a knock at the door, we looked at each other tentatively and then Helen called for the visitor to come in, as she entered and introduced herself we could see that she was a middle aged lady with dark hair dressed in a dark jacket and skirt, having pulled up a chair to the end of the bed she took a pad and pen from her briefcase.

She first asked us whether we knew of the hospice and how it worked, we said that we had a vague idea, she continued in a reassuring manner to explain what her role was and how the hospice system worked.

After a while the conversation got round to the end game and she asked why we had chosen to apply for a place at the hospice rather than for me to spend my last days at home, I explained that Helen was actually in favour of the latter but that I felt strongly that I did not want to die at home and set out the reasons why, which she said that she could understand.

I mentioned my concern that if I was sent to Birmingham hospital and things deteriorated quickly would I still be allowed to go the hospice so that I could end my days closer to my family and she affirmed that this would not be a problem and to know that agreeing to the PET scan would not close the door of the local hospice to me took a great weight off of my mind.

We got onto the details of palliative care and what the closing stages might be like and I said that all I was really interested in was having enough pain killing drugs so that the ending could be as painless as possible for both me and my family and added that as far as possible I wanted to have some dignity in the process of dying, she assured us both that that was what the hospice system of care was intended for.

She gave Helen some leaflets on the hospice and said that we could contact her at any time, she said that there would be no problem with my having a place at the hospice and not to worry as she would keep in touch with the hospital to monitor how things progressed.

We thanked her for coming to see us and after she had gone we agreed that the visit had been a lot less harrowing than had been expected, it was good to know that no matter how bad it might get that there were people who knew exactly what to do and they were going to be there to support us both right up until the end.

Helen said that she needed to get some shopping in for the folk who would be coming for the weekend visiting and that she would come back afterwards rather than visit this evening as she would need to be at the house when people arrived later.

Probably because it was POETS day the second application of cream was happily completed by early afternoon before she returned so I was hopeful that we would have no interruptions, what with the weekend visitors due to arrive and my transfer to Birmingham looming these times where Helen and I could be private were very precious.

We spent the afternoon reminiscing about all the walks we had done when we first moved to the Hereford, it had been our ambition to climb to the top of all the high spots around where we lived from where we could see the house and look back to try and spot it, this task was made slightly easier by the very tall Wellingtonia tree which is situated in the small piece of woodland next to the house, I had always joked about sticking some Christmas lights on it one year with a big star at the top.

As the afternoon went by it became difficult to avoid the awful truth of what lay ahead, at these times our discussions would wander through both real and surreal subjects which seems to be one of the effects that impending death can have on the mind.

It was important for me to make things as easy as I could for Helen after I was gone and although I was sure that family and friends would look after her I didn’t want her to have to spend the rest of her life on her own and be lonely, it was a hard subject to broach and I made a real ham fist of it by suggesting that I set her free of her marriage vow to me so that she would always know that I had been comfortable with the thought of her sharing her life later on with someone else.

How wrong could I have been, this suggestion was met with firm disparaging comments and I was told in no uncertain terms that there would be no-one else for her and she moved away from me and to emphasise her disapproval and stayed quiet for some time.

Eventually she broke the silence by saying that it was not death itself but the thought of losing me on the other side that gave her the greatest upset and invaded her sleepless nights, she had always hoped that when we died that we would go together but now that I would be going first she didn’t know how or where she would find me when it came to be her turn.

I hunted around for an answer to her torment and after a while said that I remembered from a reading that I had done for a friend’s daughters wedding that there were three things that could last forever, faith, hope and love and that the greatest of these was love.

I said we knew our love was a strong and that if we held fast to it then we would always be able to find each other, I made a play of tying an imaginary cord around her waist and said that it was an everlasting golden cord of love which could stretch forever so that she would always be able to find me no matter how far I had travelled on the other side, I pretended to test the knot by stretching the cord between us and then following my example Helen did the same.

Almost on cue the sun came out and a reflected warm glow shone into the room.

Although all this had lifted the mood, Helen still looked very drawn and tired from lack of sleep and so I asked her to lay on the bed beside me, at first her hospital training made her a bit reticent but I managed to persuade her and after drawing the curtains to the corridor window she sat on the edge of the bed, kicked off her shoes and lay back.

Luckily hospital beds are reasonably wide so we lay there both in a foetal position and it wasn’t long before she fell sound asleep, this was the closest we had been as man and wife for nearly two weeks and although I couldn’t feel much with my left arm I was just happy to hold her.

I was enjoying this moment of closeness when there was a quiet knock at the door, it opened and Gordon put his head round the jamb, I didn’t want to say anything as I was determined that Helen should not wake and as I could not use my useless left arm to wave him away I lifted my head from the pillow and shook it, luckily he caught on straight away and ducked back out of the room closing the door silently on his way out.

I did feel a bit sorry for Gordon as this was the second time that he had tried to visit and been unsuccessful both times.

The late afternoon sky slowly lost it’s brightness, there were no lights on in the room and the curtains filtered the corridor lighting so that the room gradually became a dark quiet warm cocoon and Helen continued to sleep soundly.

She woke about 5.30pm, she turned her head and smiled warmly although somewhat surprised that I had let her sleep so long, I said that I had not wanted to disturb her earlier because of the enjoyment of having her so close and knowing that she needed to sleep.

A little concerned that folk would be arriving at the house for the weekend tired and hungry after their journeys she said that she had better get home, I reluctantly agreed so she got up and put her coat on and kissed me goodbye but as she left the room she turned and gave a tug on the imaginary cord we had tied earlier.

I lifted my hip in response pretending that I could feel her pulling on the other end, she smiled, winked her eye and then disappeared from view.

About an hour after she had left Andy and Sue called in to visit on their way to the house, he told me that there would be quite a few people coming again at the weekend which I said I was grateful for but that really what I wanted most was to spend as much time as possible with Helen as we had no idea how much more time we would have together particularly after I was moved to the Birmingham hospital, he said that he understood and that he would try to pace the visits so that we could have our own space as well.

It had been a long emotional day that thankfully had finished better than it had started so I was quite happy to have my medication and get some sleep ready for the weekend ahead.

This weekend started much as the last with the noise of the hospital coming to life after the stillness of the nightshift and as this was going to be my last weekend to be able to say goodbye to those folk who came to see me at Hereford hospital I wanted to look my best so after I disconnected the NG tube from the food pump I headed to the shower room.

On the way I checked my mobile and clicked through the good night and good morning texts and found one from Helen saying that she would soon be on her way.

So after a dodgy shave, tricky shower and a messy attempt at dental hygiene, I applied some deodorant, got dressed, combed my hair and was quite pleased that with one arm I had managed to make myself reasonably presentable.

When Helen arrived I could see that she too had made sure that she looked her best to face the day and with Andy marshalling the troops again visitors arrived and departed in small groups of two, three or four.

Some visits were more traumatic than others with a lot of tears and sometimes a very strange thing happened, more than once a visitor would hang back as the others left and they would say to me how terrible it was that I had such a short amount of time left and then would go on to say that they needed to tell me something and proceeded to offload some secret of their past which they confided in me and told me that it was the first time they had told anybody about it.

It was as though they were using me as a confessional in the hope that my impending departure to the hereafter would allow me to obtain some kind of absolution for them.

Later that afternoon Alan and Sue arrived, he confirmed that his enquiries had managed to locate a double plot on a hillside in a cemetery just outside Winchester and that he had brought the paperwork with him so that we could make an application to purchase it.

We thanked him for all his efforts on our behalf and then Helen took the notepad from her bag and we spent a good twenty minutes to half an hour with them discussing the funeral arrangements that we had agreed earlier in the week.

Alan said that we would be able to have the funeral service at the local church as Helen wanted and then just a small family group could escort the coffin for the interment a day or so later, I had a bizarre momentary thought wondering where would I spend the time in between and what I would do while I was waiting.

They took copious notes themselves and on seeing the strain we were under said that they could finalise the small details later and would leave us and let Andy know not to let anyone else visit for a while.

For us, each day that past brought the end ever closer and this was being emphasised by all the fiscal, funerary and legal planning we were having to cope with and so it took us sometime to compose ourselves ready to receive more visitors.

By early evening I had become very tired and the remaining family visitors said their goodbyes. Andy and Helen were the last to leave, she made sure that I was comfortable in bed before they left.

Sunday pretty much continued as Saturday had left off, the real blessing of the weekend was that no little man came to cover me in steroid cream and in fact the blotches from the penicillin allergy had already started to fade noticeably.

Several visitors came again to day, some had stayed at the house overnight others lived locally in the surrounding area , Joyce and Albert also visited again and this time it was less traumatic for all of us than the previous weekend.

As the day came to a close I was left with many thoughts about the kindnesses everyone had shown, their concern for Helen and the rest of the family and I felt blessed to have so many loving friends and family, but I also knew that this would be the last time that I would see many of them.

The realization that they had come to say their last goodbyes and that in all probability I would not be around long enough to spend a final Christmas with the ones I loved set my mind into overdrive about what may lay ahead for me in these last two weeks and by the time the nurse with the drugs trolley arrived I really needed my diazepam to calm me down.