The Peacefulness of the Hospice.

Finty Hunter
Sep 8, 2018 · 4 min read

Death is violent, red, and angry. It is also grey, a nebulous mist that settles slowly over you until you realise that it is all around. The hospice my father died in was full of this mist. It was gentle, peaceful, even.

We had been told earlier that day that they had no beds, that my father couldn’t be admitted. We knew he needed to be. Once the nurses who visited once a day saw how bad he had got, how close he was to the end, they made a call and soon an ambulance was at our door. Whilst this may seem hectic, chaotic, it was actually calm. The paramedics, one of which looked slightly like Hagrid in stature, sat on the chair in my parents’ bedroom and chatted to Dad before carrying him down the stairs. The size of ‘Hagrid’ made my father seem like a small child. I went in the ambulance with him, and it was a gentle journey, a similar route to the one I had taken on my driving test, I noticed.

The entrance was calm, I came in with my Dad on a bed, or some kind of stretcher, the details escape me, and we were met by a kind lady at the reception who knew his name and made us feel welcome. Feeling welcome in a hospice isn’t perhaps what you think you would want, especially when we never planned to be there — we had planned to stay at home for the duration of my father’s illness — but it was exactly what we needed. The building was cosy, with a large sitting room area where a cat roamed around and there were wooden beams on the ceiling. The room was light, with large sofas; it was quiet. There was not the sound of hospital machines flatlining or doctors rushing around. It wasn’t like I had imagined, but then again, I had no idea what to imagine.

He had his own room with a comfortable chair that was meant for him if he could get out of bed but he never did. So I sat there. There was a small television on the wall — ‘Let it Shine’ was playing quietly in the background whilst he died, we had put the TV on just to fill the silence.

The cafe down the corridor served a great toastie. I called a friend while I ate it.

A Doctor almost made a Freudian slip and nearly said ‘I’m sure you’re sick to death of hearing about dying’, but she stopped herself. I had to quiet a laugh because I really didn’t think anyone else thought this was a time for joking. But I still look back on that moment fondly, weirdly enough.

In the face of so much devastation, so much grief even before death, a kind nurse brought us tea and biscuits, volunteers rattled down the corridor with a bar trolley. We sipped my father’s favourite drink, whiskey, while we sat around his bed. Soon the bar trolley was gone and we sent my brother to the Asda round the corner to fetch some wine, microwave pasta ready meals and more whiskey — nice whiskey at that. Why not push the boat out?

The Irish nurse who had given us blankets as we prepared to settle in for a night of waiting for a final breath laughed softly when she saw our collection of booze. But we had only just opened the wine, my Mum and I had only just started to eat our pasta, and my brother was still microwaving his dinner, when that moment actually came. There were no flashing lights, no rushing around, it was incredibly peaceful, a slipping away, like when you’re driving on a winter morning and you slowly can’t see the way you came from in your rear view mirror. The nurse came back in and knew immediately that it had happened. We finished our pasta and went back and sat outside in the living room with the high ceilings and the cat.

The next day I came back to collect my car, having had too much of a pre-wake to drive, and I was met with kindness — if a little confusion from the receptionist who had not realised my Dad had died after only spending 24 hours in the hospice. A few days after that we were invited back and met by another nurse, one who had hugged me and chatted about my degree with me in the immediate aftermath of his death, because normality was the only thing we had to hold on to. They gave us information about support and then we walked away.

I have not been near the hospice since. But it will always mean something to me. It was a place that gave us peace in a month of confusing sadness. One thing in particular someone there said to me stuck out: ‘here you can be the family, not the carers’. And they were right. We were able to be there as daughter, son, and wife, not faux-nurses who really had no idea what they were doing and stared at the box of prescription painkillers like it was an unexploded bomb.

People always say ‘at least it was peaceful’ and that phrase used to make me angry, even though I said it myself when I was at a loss at what to reply to the many condolence messages I received, but now, I think they’re right. At least it was peaceful. At least it was the best it could have been. Morphine gradually replacing pain until the mist settled and everything became a little greyer.

To find out more about St. Catherine’s Hospice, Crawley, and see the incredible work they do click here.

Finty Hunter

Written by

20 years old. writing to feel better.