Goodbye

My father, who was a male nurse, called pneumonia ‘the patient’s friend’. It makes it touching, I suppose, that pneumonia made friends with him on Wednesday and that their friendship lasted until noon today, when my father quietly passed away in his sleep.

I don’t know why I write this now, except I’ve been writing something like this in my mind for the last twelve weeks. Writing, as I’ve said before, is the only way I know to channel my emotions, even as I sit here in my chair, wet with tears and trembling with such profound sadness that I really find it hard to know how life ever goes on. I don’t know how I will go on.

The irony has never been lost to me that as one successful Richard promoted a book about fathers that this unsuccessful Richard such be living out the worse twelve weeks of his life. Yet the greatest support throughout this difficult time has been my father. His wisdom, his words, his laughter and his spirit: they all made the difficult times much easier to bear.

For nearly three months, we’ve lived with the situation of his illness. From the moment he suffered a sub-arachnoid haemorrhage back in June – the hottest day in the year – there hasn’t been a day which hasn’t been filled with anxiety, sadness, and great pity. Yet there had always been hope. The haemorrhage left him without speech but over the last few weeks he had been making progress. It was progress we hoped would see him escape the hospital before the flu season. In that time, I have seen him smile and laugh. He said important things to us, even if the words didn’t come and all we had was the imploring look of love in his bright blue eyes. I can still feel his lips on my cheek from the first kiss he had given me since I was a child. If there is a single significant event in my life, it was that moment when I felt him stretch up from his hospital bed and kiss my cheek.

Yet even as we thought things would get better, it was as though he knew what was coming. All his life he was susceptible to chest infections and, two weeks ago, I think he knew what was in his future. I was sitting by his bedside, my mother on the other side, when he took my hand and hers, and placed the two together. I didn’t want to believe what he was telling me. But my father knew better. He understood what it means to be in a NHS hospital in winter. My greatest guilt is that my ridiculous hopes of being a writer meant that I never had the money to get him private medical care. I will carry that guilt with me forever.

It makes it all feel so wrong that it was a chest infection has now taken him from us. I want to say things about the NHS, the superb treatment he received at one hospital, the deficiencies of another, the wonderful staff we met at both, but now isn’t the time.

I suppose I just wanted to write one last post and bring my blogging career to an end as I face an unknowable future. I now have people to support and idle dreams are suddenly so selfish given this new reality. Yet everything I have ever written or tried to write, I wrote to honour my father, Frank. He was the kindest, gentlest, most humble man I have ever had the privilege to know. I will miss him more than these frail and ridiculous words can ever hope to convey.

David