Fifty-Seven Days
It is just two weeks today since my wife of twenty-eight years, Clodagh, passed away, she was only 54. I am not okay and right now I find it hard to think of a time when I will ever be okay again, my eyes feel strained from bulging under the weight of the tears behind them. Over these past two weeks, I have cried, I have felt empty, I have gotten angry and I have been supported by old friends and new but most of the time I just find it completely unreal. I know that it has happened but I still don’t know that I can really believe it.
It was on January 6th this year that Clodagh got the news of her cancer. I waited in the car outside the hospital while the consultant outlined the bladder cancer diagnosis and told her what it was they could do. It was only the previous October that as a result of a scan for her ongoing Crohn’s disease that they decided to carry out a biopsy but more as a precaution than anything else. Cancer was not something that she or indeed I was anticipating and while the news did come as a shock we were both reassured that this was a problem that could be fixed. The treatment was surgery and the hope was that once her bladder was removed then the cancer would be gone with it.
The actual procedure is called a Radical Cystectomy and involves the removal of the bladder, uterus, ovaries, and urethra. In Clodagh’s case, they also removed her gall bladder, some bile ducts and performed some surgery to correct fistulas that had developed after Crohn’s surgery in 2013. It was a long and difficult surgery and Covid restrictions meant that at the time none of us could be with her in the hospital either before or after her operation. Recovery was slow but seemed to be heading in the right direction and after almost six weeks in the hospital, I was finally allowed to visit on our 28th wedding anniversary in March. She came home shortly after that having spent fifty nights in the hospital and she was making what we hoped was steady progress.
Another hospital visit in April to remove the drains that they had inserted into her kidneys led to a further two-week stay. During that visit, she had some follow on scans to see how the surgery had gone and it was as a result that she was asked to return to meet with the consultant in May. May 13th to be exact and this time I was allowed to be with her when she got the devasting news that the cancer was not gone and that now there was nothing more that they could do. I think we were both shocked numb as we had assumed that the surgery had worked and that while the recovery was slow and difficult it was something that would come right with time. Now time was something she no longer had and she was all out of treatment options too.
Now time was something she no longer had and she was all out of treatment options too.
She was admitted to the hospital from the consultant’s rooms and that first weekend things seemed to be spiralling out of control pretty quickly. I was allowed to be with her and by the Saturday evening had received more phone calls from the hospital than I had received in the previous thirty years of dealing with her sometimes complicated medical history. On Sunday morning I had to ring two of our three children who were away from Waterford to get them to come home and come to the hospital as soon as they could. The Sunday afternoon was particularly critical but remarkably with the help and support of the medical teams, Clodagh did pull back from the brink.
After about a week she was well enough to go back to a regular room but the recovery plateaued and despite the intervention of several specialists the overall prognosis never changed and she began a steady decline that unfortunately ended all too quickly. After a further five weeks in the hospital, Clodagh came home on June 21st thanks to the help and support of far too many people to mention. At home we got to spend almost two full weeks with her, looking after her, helping her and allowing her to meet her friends and family. On the evening of Sunday, July 4th she fell into a sleep that she never really woke from and on Friday, July 9th surrounded by our sons Shaun, Levi and Christian and me, her breathing gradually got slower and shallower and then gently stopped.
The pain which had been progressively getting worse was gone, my best friend, my wife and my everything was gone too. Imagining a world without her seems impossible and this grief feels like a weight pressing on my chest and forcing the breath from my lungs. It fluctuates between barely bearable and totally unbearable but I know that I owe it to her and to our sons to carry on as best I can. I just never saw this one coming and at the start of the year, if I made a list of a thousand or even a million things I was worried about, I don’t think that this would have been on there. I just assumed that we had more time to do all of the things we wanted to do. I am sad for what we didn’t do but I am glad for all of what we did.
It wasn’t until after Clodagh passed that I had time to think about how quickly this has all happened. From the time she was told that the cancer wasn’t gone to the evening, she passed away was only fifty-seven days. She did ask the consultant how long she had when she got the dreadful news and just as quickly decided that she didn’t want to know. I don’t know that any of us in our worst nightmares would have contemplated that it would be so short.
I didn’t count the days as they were passing but I did try to make the days count…
I didn’t count the days as they were passing but I did try to make the days count and we did all that we could to accommodate and encourage old friends who wanted to visit and family who wanted to spend time with Clodagh. We laughed, we cried, we hugged and tried to do everything we could to make some meaningful and wonderful memories. We talked and planned too and reminisced on a lifetime together. There have been good times and bad and I got to thank her for all of them. Her phone was never busier and the calls and texts all brought a smile, a laugh and sometimes a tear.
One of the highlights of what was otherwise a very bleak time was a short conversation that she got to have with Christy Dignam from Aslan. I had asked Clodagh who she would like to talk to and his name was top of her list, reaching out through a mutual contact he came good and spoke to her for about fifteen or twenty minutes late on the Thursday just over a fortnight before she passed. She was thrilled to speak with him again and she was delighted that he took the time to call. I am beyond grateful and it was incredibly selfless and a really generous act for someone facing his own health difficulties.
Where I go from here I have no idea. Clodagh’s funeral and cremation were meaningful and beautiful and we celebrated the life she had and mourned not just for her but also for the life she didn’t get to have. A close friend described the day as “brilliant” and while I was slightly shocked by his choice of superlative, I appreciated the sentiment as I know she would have too. My three sons are her legacy and her lasting gift to me and to the world. They did us both proud over these past few difficult weeks and months and I see all of her in each of them.
The outpouring of love and affection that we have seen in so many messages, cards and from those who have phoned or called to see us or attended Clodagh’s wake, funeral mass or cremation has been humbling and has shown us the depth of love that was there for her and the amount of support available to us. It doesn’t take away the pain but it does offer some comfort in these difficult times. The fact that we got the time, however small, to be with her has helped too and I am painfully aware that it is a mercy that is not afforded to everyone, that her passing was gentle and painfree does help in it’s own small way too.
Thank you, Clodagh for the last fifty-seven days and for all of the days that went before them.
All my love, Always.
I love you more than ever, more than time and more than love
I love you more than money and more than the stars above
I love you more than all these things with a love that doesn’t bend
And if there is eternity I’d love you there again.Bob Dylan
