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My father’s longtime girlfriend died in my arms as I struggled to place an oxygen mask on her face. One minute alive, the next taking her final breath, a sort of wheeze, her body went limp and she was gone.
She had cancer. Her friends had left the building, her daughters found her condition far too distressing to look after her, and my father rented a second apartment across the landing, the trauma room as he called it. He didn’t do sick people. I employed a nurse to care for her while I was at work and spent nights on her sofa.
At first, I couldn’t believe she was dead... and on my watch! The nurse had just left for gawd sake. She couldn’t be. I paced the room. I checked her pulse. Her skin was translucent, porcelain, all lines erased.
I called my boyfriend.
“I think Betty’s dead”
"Are you sure?"
"No. What'll I do?"
"Hold a mirror in front of her mouth"
I called her mother.
"Nora, Betty’s dead"
"What do you mean dead?" "She was alive on Tuesday!" "What did you do?"
I’m not the over-emotional type. There was no weeping or gnashing of teeth. Betty wasn’t my favourite person. A raging drunk, she reminded me too much of my mother.
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I would have been about 19 when my mother died in some dingy flat in Bristol, with apple crates for furniture, though I’d been sending her money regularly. I wasn’t sorry. She wasn’t my favourite person either. I’d booked a holiday in Brazil leaving the next day, and off I went. Guiltless.
My father died on my birthday five years ago. He suffered from dementia. I looked after him for 4 years until one day while I ran to the local shop, he threw himself out the window. Into a nursing home he went and within two years he was dead.
To quote Oscar Wilde: “To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.”
I was saddened when he died, though he’d been lost to me for years. But more than that, I felt guilty that I’d allowed him to die in a nursing home. For a long time those coulda, shoulda, wouldas plagued me. I didn't have a funeral for him. His body was taken straight to the crematorium, as was his wish.
I've never attended a funeral. I try to look after people while they're alive. I leave attendance at funerals to those who become invisible when sickness comes to call on their family and friends.
Gawd, I'm self-righteous!
Do I fear death? Well, no, I don't. I fear pain, but not death...as long as it's not next week!
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Posted in response to @galenkp's Weekend Experiences prompt asking 'What experiences have you had with the death of someone close to you or a pet - How did it affect you in the moment and moving forward?'
You are a beautiful person with the biggest heart! And very brave. Sending love! 🩷🩷🩷
Aw shucks, thanks. Everyone tells me that:)
I don't fear death either, I think it's a senseless and unproductive feeling/thought to have. Instead, I focus on life which seems a much more relevant thing to be thinking about. I like knowing I'll die someday as it helps me live better now, plan for living better in the future, and will invariably mean my overall life is better. Like you, I don't want to die tomorrow, next week or next year but when I do I'll be gone and I'll not give a fuck because I'll be dead.
I guess one might say fearing not living a full life is a better thing to fear and it's sort of motivational, a reminder. That's what my quote (below my posts) is all about. Design and create your ideal life, don't live it by default.
Anyway, thanks for joining in, when you do it makes me feel I got at least one topic right.
I don't fear death because I know I'll just be recycled back in to the video game:)
Your topics are always inspired and I don't know how you manage to keep them coming.
I try to join every week and indeed I start writing on Friday morning. But when Sunday at half past midnight comes and my post still wouldn't even entertain the cat, I tootle off to bed... defeated!
You reckon you'll respawn like a video game? If I knew that I'd have lived a little harder! Not really, lived hard enough as it is. Lol.
Thank you, I think up the topics all the time, email them to myself and then put them together in each post. It would probably make sense to leave only two topics in each but I like to give options rather than be a lazy bastard.
I wrote some today actually, weeks 225, 226, 227, 228, 229, 230 and 231. I like to get a little bit ahead.
Hahaha, yer gas! I don't suppose you fancy giving me a little peek:)
I could...but that would ruin the surprise.
Surprises are overrated:)
Yes, I agree.
No peeks though. 🙈
Once again, your experience knocks all others out of the running! You have such a gift for telling stories, the true kind. (this is true, right?) Spare, incisive, compelling. And oh so short as to be brutally to the point.
If you hadn't taken care of Betty, would no one else have done it? Not her mother? Did you do it for her? For your father? To apologize for your father? I don't think I would have. Did anyone show gratitude for what you did for her? Something tells me no
Yes, true, every word. Betty wanted to die at home and was screaming blue murder in the hospice, being disruptive. They wanted rid of her. Nobody would step up to take her. She only had weeks left if that. She was clutching at me, begging me to take her out. I didn't want to, but how could I refuse and live with myself?
Gratitude, No! But I didn't expect any. I didn't go to the funeral and apparently her mother was outraged and accused me of having had some hand in her daughter's demise. My father acted abominably throughout the whole thing but he never could cope with anyone being sick. Sickness is all in the mind, he used to say. Ironic!
Edit: Thanks for the reblog!
I love your stories!
Some mother that Betty had. Wouldn't care for her herself, not even for a few weeks, but was outraged about the way you did it. There have been a great many colorfully dark persons in your life.
Nora was as tough as nails, an ex-moneylender. I suppose there have been a lot of dark people in my life. Shit! What does that say about me?:)
Nothing you say here surprises me. Not that you took care of people you didn't have warm feelings for. Not that your mother died in a dingy flat. Although, I'm always a little surprised when you refer to your father with affection. It seems he was not an ideal parent. However, there is no telling what the heart will do. It has no obligation to be rational.
I did relate to your reaction to your mother's death. When my father died, my brother called me. I was on the way to the movies. I thanked him for calling me and continued with my plan. The movie wasn't that good, but the popcorn was as I recall. His death didn't even merit an asterisk in my afternoon.
Years later (now) I wonder if that was the best thing for me. Maybe it would have been better if I had come to terms with how I felt. Certainly, there is no guilt.
As always, your blog is more than worth the read.
Do I refer to my father with affection? Oops! I didn't have much regard for either of them, but I do give my father some credit for not deserting us. Had we been left with my mother alone, I think we'd've ended up in care.
I think your reaction to your father's death was natural even from what little I know of him.
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