Dad is dead. Those three tiny words have filled up my head until it
aches from the pressure of them. My stomach feels like a deep dark abyss has
formed within it. We found out last night that dad had a heart attack and died
suddenly whilst in hospital for a lung problem which led to finding out he had
terminal cancer.
I feel like a stone in a wooden pail. Sometimes I am the stone, hard and
cold, banging against the side of a wooden prison; sometimes I am the bucket,
hollow except for the rattling stone and echoes. The only thing I feel I can do
at the moment is to be as still and quiet as possible and hope the rattling
will stop and the pressure in my head will ease.
Our first indication that dad was not very well was on 23rd
July when he went into hospital and an x-ray found fluid covering 2 thirds of
his right lung. The doctors put a tube in and drained more than 3 litres but it
kept on accumulating.
On the 28th July doctors found cancer on his liver. Mum and
dad cancelled their planned river boat holiday from Budapest to Amsterdam that
had been scheduled for November.
By the 5th August we got the news that the cancer was inoperable
and treatment would be limited to pain relief. Mum said that dad had asked for
us to come over and visit him as soon as we can, we started to make plans.
Mum and Gary bought a mobile phone for dad as he has trouble using a
phone with his hearing aid. We tried to ring him on it but to no avail,
apparently he turned it off in frustration.
On the 7th August the doctors said the liver cancer was
secondary to a particularly aggressive form of pancreatic cancer. Once the
fluid on the lung has been sorted he would be sent home.
He had been taken off the blood thinning medication to prevent the
possibility of internal bleeds.
There was a problem with his drain as it had come out and had to be
replaced. The plan was to get him stable and then transfer him from Middlemore
to Auckland hospital for the operation on his lung. After he had recovered he
should have been going home in a week or so.
We went into London and got Sue’s passport renewed and made enquiries
into flights to New Zealand and on the 9th August we booked our
flights to leave the UK on the 15th and returning from NZ on the 1st
September.
At about half past eleven at night on Sunday the 10th August (Monday
in New Zealand) Gary and Mum called to say that dad had died. He had a blood
clot that caused a heart attack and he passed away quickly. They rang back a
couple of hours later and said that they would arrange the funeral for the
Monday or Tuesday after we got there.
As I laid my head down on the pillow after the news I could hear my
heartbeat pulsing in my ear and it sounded like footsteps in crisp snow,
walking purposefully and without pause to who knows where. Sue and I lay in bed
for a long while as the sash windows knocked with the last gusts of the storm
that had passed through the day before. Eventually it became awfully still. We
stopped trying to sleep and got a hot drink and watched some TV. Through the
windows we could see that the moon was full and high in the night sky, its
imperfect face shining in the darkness with silvery light.
We recalled how whilst they were talking to us from the other side of
the world dad would say ‘we have the sun and the moon… …what do you have?’
Tonight the moon was the closest it gets to earth, known as perigee or a
supermoon. It appears 14% bigger and 30% brighter than other full moons during
the year and precedes the dramatic Perseid meteor shower. It is a cold light.
Dad is dead, and now the tears come as I write this…
