I’ve booked a room at a local hotel but, by 8pm, realise I’m not going to use it. I don’t want to leave my father’s side, not just because he is still a little agitated but because I’m genuinely terrified he will die whilst I’m not there. I discuss it with the nurses and they tell me it’s fine to use the recliner next to the bed - they even bring me a sheet and pillow.
The night I pass is one of the worst of my life. My father is groaning loudly, will not settle and is regularly trying to climb out of the bed. Every few minutes, I rouse myself to comfort him and pull his legs back into bed. He’s a big man and it’s a tough job. I try to calm him by holding his hand and stroking his brow but nothing helps. At around 4am, he tears off his gown and the sheet that covers him, leaving him as naked as the day he was born. Every hour or so, I call for a nurse to help me but for some reason I feel uncomfortable disturbing them - it feels like it should be me who cares for him.
By morning, however, I’m a wreck. I’ve barely slept and what sleep I did catch was broken. I’ve eaten nothing but some biscuits in the last 24 hours, nor showered or changed my clothes. But there’s no way I will leave - I have to talk to the consultant and explain to her that he needs his medication adjusted.
By 9am she’s arrived, along with two proteges, and - like everyone else at the hospice - is incredibly kind and sympathetic. After I’ve explained the situation, and told her how distressed my father’s night was, she agrees to set him up with a morphine pump, as well as plenty of midazolam, a sedative and one of the essential drugs used to ensure good end-of-life quality.
By 11am, everything is in place and the drugs are beginning to take effect. I doze off in the chair next to him and awake to see him in what appears to be a comfortable sleep. His breathing is not entirely regular but not shallow either. I ask one of the kind nurses what’s happening. To my disbelief, she tells me that he’s deteriorating very fast and he may well die in the next hours or the following day.
I look at her, incredulous. This fast? She reassures me that he’s definitely not in pain then breaks the news to me that he’s not sleeping - in fact, in the last hour he has actually slipped into unconsciousness.
“It’s very likely now that he won’t open his eyes again, or respond to your hand squeezes.”
I don’t believe her. I am convinced he will open his eyes one more time. There cannot be this little time left. There cannot be.
All afternoon, and into the early evening, I sit beside him, clutching his hand, willing him to awake, to look at me one more time, to whisper one more word to me, to give me reassurance that he still recognises me. But nothing. The nurses console me and tell me to keep talking to him - apparently, hearing is the last sense to go. I sit beside him and tell him that I love him and I’m going to miss him. Tears roll down my cheeks. I am watching him die slowly before my eyes.
By 9pm, I’m so exhausted I can barely stand and the staff almost order me to go away and take some rest. They assure me that if he deteriorates, they will call me. En route to the hotel, I stop at his apartment to pick up some old photos of his - the nurses have told me this is something I can chat to him about. I find one of him as a young boy, a second of him with his brothers and a third of him with his dad, taken around 30 years ago. I think he would like these.
As I place the photos in my bag, I take a look around the apartment, full of my father’s belongings. Books, prints hanging on the wall, his walking stick propped up against the bedroom door. I’d only been here a few weeks ago, visiting him - he’d sat in his comfy chair whilst I lolled on the sofa. The sight of his personal effects is unbearable.
I shut the door behind me, vowing never to return - after it’s all over, it will be the job of my sisters (who - for reasons I will never understand - have decided not to join me at the hospice) to deal with this. As I stumble out of his block of flats, the enormity of the situation has finally begun to sink in. It’s very close to the end now.