10.6.10 | My Father (part 1)
It began, i suppose, a couple of days before their usual May holiday to Cyprus. but in truth, it must have begun a long time, many many months before that. There were no signs. He had been sick two days before they went out, but was fine on the day of departure.
It continued with a scared phone call from my Mum two days before their return.
"Paul, your dads been taken to the hospital. He started vommiting blood..."
We thought it was the Warfarin tablets he was taking, causing an adverse reaction because he had a bug or stomach upset. Little did we realize what they were reacting to, or the very serious nature of what the medical teams in the Cyprus hospital were going to discover.
And then they came home. My parents. Exhausted far beyond their means to endure. My fathers skin already looking yellow. We put him to bed immediately. My mother, somehow dregging every last resource of energy she could muster to get things done before she too pulled herself into bed beside the man she had loved for over 50 years. I still marvel at how much she has given to get here.
Somewhere, between stepping through the front door and slumber, she was able to hand me the hospital report below:
It's the last paragraph that i return to over and over again. The one that burns irrevocably in my mind and threatens to tear grief howling from my throat- a physical/mental rupturing of every part of my body. You can't know it until you've been there.
My father. My father has come home to die.
0 comments :.
-------
Post a Comment
-------