Bereavement. A year on.
This time last year, I had just celebrated 10 years of marriage to my gorgeous wife, Cheryl. My best friend, confidant and awesome mother to our two delightful daughters.
Things were going well, really well. Work was busy, projects were progressing really well, and I was in a happy place.
Then, I received one of the phone calls you never want to receive. It was from my Dad, and immediately I knew this was going to be bad. My Mum had been rushed into hospital after my Dad found her unconscious in the morning and completely unresponsive.
I was at my sister in-laws house celebrating the birth of her second son the day before, and immediately dropped everything to get home and get on the next train to North Wales. Not a simple task and quite time consuming when time wasn’t something I believed I had a lot of. After a drive home filled with calls to colleagues to rearrange my days ahead and trying to establish what was happening with my Mum, I got home and booked myself on the next direct train to Bangor from Euston.
What followed was a week that will last with me.
There are no words to describe what it is like to enter an ICU suite where a loved one is connected through countless tubes and sensors to an array of life saving equipment that is keeping that person alive. It was an overwhelming experience and at first I couldn’t come to believe what I was seeing. I guess I was in a state of shock. The conversation I had with my Dad when Mum had been taken to hospital just didn’t set the scene for this.
After 24hrs, we had the conversation that you don’t want to have. That because of the intensity of the stroke which my Mum had suffered, that 93% of her brain had been destroyed during the night before she was found, and that there was no coming back. It was now a matter of time and making her final hours (and days as it turned out) to be comfortable for her.
It was horrific. I have always had a feeling of not spending as much time talking with my Mum as I should have, owing to her having hearing problems when talking over the phone. But, we compensated through frequent Skype calls with the girls fighting for attention with their grandparents by the sea!
Over the coming days, Dad and I took it in turn to spend 24hrs with my Mum, sleeping in an ante-room to the ICU suite for a couple of hours nap time during the night. I found the time with Mum to be a case of waiting for the inevitable last breath, and being both ready and fearful for that event.
Having arrived into Wales on the Sunday afternoon, after much time and heart searching, I was missing my Wife and daughter terribly at this point. My Uncle, Mum’s brother, was due to arrive on the Saturday morning and after much discussion with Dad, I left on a late afternoon train from Bangor back to London. It was such a tough decision to make and a journey of worry that I had made a bad decision I may come to regret.
Saturday.
It was early afternoon when I received the call from my Dad. Mum had just passed away. My Uncle came on the phone and shared that it had been incredibly peaceful and unnoticeable. This started what had been hanging over my head every day since. Why wasn’t I there? Why couldn’t I have waited just another 24hrs to come home?
Funerals.
As funerals go, it was a lovely send off to my Mum. Much love was shared, family and friends from far around came to attend. The lovely Catholic priest who came to support Dad and I at Ysbytty Gwynedd took the service and brought his humble and lovely words to the gathering.
A Year On.
I guess this is quite a leap, but tomorrow (Tuesday) will be a year to the day since I had the call, and there is not a day that goes by without thinking of my Mum and a deep lingering guilt that I was not there on her day of passing.
A number of times since, when I have spoken about this with friends, family and others – the consistent message I hear is that maybe, Mum was waiting for me to leave before she passed away. This brings some solace to me, and having researched this extensively in the months since, it appears to be a common theme with immediate family members.
So, why did I write this post? I guess on some level, it is just another way of helping me deal with the events of the past year. As this day has drawn closer, I have found myself revisiting many of the feelings, emotions and memories of that week, and having now reached a year of anniversaries – it’s time to bring an element of closure I perhaps haven’t had up to now.
What I do appreciate though is the support from my wife, close family and friends and colleagues at work who were really there when I needed them most.
