Just the way it is
by Ellen, NSW, Australia
Communications, Aged 34
The night before my father died, I lay with him in the bed, tending him while my brother and mother slept. My cousin, a nurse, had taught me how to administer pain relief. Four months of illness had taught me just how to rub my father's back and stroke his arm. I mopped his mouth as he coughed up blood and mucous and when he indicated, we staggered to the bathroom where he would relieve himself in private - me listening at the door, for clues of an emergency. Then before he came out, I would rush back to the bedroom and remake the bed, piling the pillows up and smoothing creases from the sheets.
And so the night continued. When I heard him drop into sleep for a few moments, I would hurry down the dark hallway in my bare feet, to fetch fresh water and more pills. When he woke, I would hold his hand and stroke his hair and ask if there was something, anything that I could do for him. At that he would look at me for a long moment, as though from a far off place he hoped I would never visit, and slowly shake his head saying, 'No honey-bun. It's just the way it is'.
That night, the hours drew on forever. My father, reduced to a skeleton from the cancer in his gullet, seemed to be wrestling with an invisible force. He would lift his head and let it fall to the pillow. He tipped himself onto his right side and lay there like a pile of rags, puffing. Then he would suddenly sit bolt upright and hunch his back, his head bowed in momentary defeat before falling backwards in a groan.
Time crawled on all fours. Once, I opened my eyes from a micro-slumber and found my father sitting on the edge of the mattress, staring into the mirror by the bed. His hair was wild like a cockatoo's comb. His face was gaunt and his eyes were round in the dim light. I propped myself up on my elbow and my face appeared in the mirror near his. We sat there a second, watching ourselves in the reflection - as though viewing ourselves as performers, playing our roles in the final act of some surreal tragedy. Neither of us spoke. Words were now all wrong. Like stones thrown in a pond at dawn.
When the morning light did finally arrive, my father seemed suddenly buoyed by a new burst of life. Just as all things pass, even that night of restlessness had come to an end - and with that revelation my father seemed primed for giving another day his best shot. I stood with my mother and brother by the bed, as Dad cracked jokes and declared he was hungry for ice cream. I fetched him a small bowl of the stuff and he slurped it with great vigour.
My nursing cousin arrived and with her, the palliative care nurse from the hospital. With all of us in the room, it felt oddly like a party. My father, his teeth out, was grinning.
I have heard it said that people can time their death far better than we think. That what to us can seem an untimely departure, is in fact a consciously chosen moment, executed with precision. My father, suddenly hearty, had convinced my brother to return to his work. When my brother told him 'I'll be back in two days', my father answered 'I'll be here'. I drove my brother to the airport and we discussed the strange turnaround of our father's health. Perhaps he was going to live longer than we thought. We had just reached the airport when my brother's mobile rang. It was my cousin. 'This is it', she said and we knew what she meant.
By the time we returned to the house, my father had died. We missed him, they said, by a matter of seconds. Hurrying up the hallway I glimpsed my father lying on the bed and something in me said, 'I'd better take him a fresh glass of water'. But Dad didn't need water any more. He didn't need pills or massage or even ice cream. His body, somehow thinner in death than it had been in life, lay motionless. The churning, heaving, squirming movement was gone. I thought I saw his chest rise in breathing, but when I stared, it was still. 'Dying & dead', I told myself. 'Dying & dead'.
Just six weeks have passed since my father's body stopped. His ashes fill an urn, awaiting scattering among the trees. I miss him as one would miss a leg. And like a missing limb, think he is still with me, until I try and step out in the world. But when I do fall down, grief rising in a searing pain, its as if he is there to pick me up. And I hear him saying, softly now, 'Honey bun - it's just the way it is'.
Copyright © Australian Museum, 2009