The old git

The inevitable happened.
After years of treatment, years of discomfort. The old git finally gave in.
He was 6stone 10lbs and weak.
He didnt shave so he had a white wispy beard.
He took to his bed and slept.
From morning till night. He didn’t move. Maybe a shuffle here and there.
He stopped eating. He stopped drinking.
When we asked him if he needed anything, we had to go close to his face to understand his mumblings..
‘What do you want?’
In a voice that was barely there he whispered
‘Whiskey.’
In the end he didn’t even want that.
We’d been advised that in Germany it’s called ‘death by fasting’. The patient goes into hospital and it’s nil by mouth. Over a period of two weeks the body breaks down.
He wasn’t in pain, or distress. A couple of nauseous moments, but in the main he just faded away.
We called the palliative care nurses.
Om from Gujarat came with Barbar from Lahore.
Two strong nurses with white teeth and dark black beards.
They tried to get him into the bathroom but the effort was too much for them and him.
They sat him on the hall chair and carried him back to bed. Like a sultan on a litter.
A frail little man who had stopped telling jokes and didn’t have the breath to thank them.
‘Comode?’ they said. We declined.
They brought in a pack of big nappies with frills round the thighs.
My old git went to his maker wearing a blue t-shirt and filly knickers.

On Thursday night our next door neighbour gave us a camera.
When the kids were little she would come in to our kitchen and watch her sleeping babies on the gopro as we share a hot coffee.
She set it up.
I had pictures of the northern actor on my phone on my laptop and the dawter had it on her mobile.
She and the beau went to the pub. I watched telly with my phone perched on the arm of the chair.
Every time he moved I struggled upstairs. He wanted to slide out of the bed and go to the bathroom.
‘You cant make it,’ I said quietly. ‘Your little legs can’t carry you.’
He was cold, his feet like a pack of frozen fish fingers.
Went down stairs and watched him on the screen. I had always loved his acting but now his performance was tragic and sad.
Every ten minutes he would shove his feet out of the bed and swing his body to sit up.
The dawter called from the pub, she was watching the same silent show.
He ended up on his knees his body slumped over the bed his head buried in the duvet.
I couldn’t move him so the pair of them came home from the pub and gently put him back into the bed.
They returned to their pints.
He lay on his back, his cadaverous face drawn. His nose cold.
His bony hands under the pillows.
Around midnight the dawter came into the room from the attic and I came up from the siting room.
‘His breathing has changed.’ she said.
No distress, no coughing or gurgling.
He sat up on the side of the bed and laid his head on her shoulder. She sat to the right of him.
I sat to the left. His hands were icy.
I went into the bathroom. The dawter called me back.
‘Mum, I think he’s gone.’
I sat down next to him, The dawter and I whispered to each other. Taking his pulse. Feeling his heart.
Heads next to his nose.
‘Has he gone?” I asked. I couldn’t tell. The beau came into the bedroom.
‘Yes.’ he said gently.
There was a moment of caught breathe.
A gulp of pain.
He sat next to the dawter his head hung down.
She held onto her father for ages. But it was a dead weight.
She lay him back on the bed.
My 82 year old husband had died.
The beau called the nurses. One came form Eastbourne one from Sevenoaks. They were lovely and kind. They went upstairs to confirm the death filling out forms and declaring that the ‘oosbind had died at 1.00 a.m.on June 12th. Or Friday 13th if you looked at it from the other way round..
The three of us were jovial with the two nurses. The bonhomie of shock. It hadn’t yet sunk in.
The undertakers arrived at 5.20
Kelly ‘s trousers were tight round her dimpled bum.
Chris was respectful in his maroon tail coat.
They took a trolley upstairs. They placed him in a maroon zip up bag and brought him down the stairs.
I felt his bony shoulders. They wheeled him out into the cool dawn.
The beau followed them to their car. They bowed to the man who would never return.
I called his two other dawters.
Numb.
I hadn’t banked on the confusion. Why hadn’t we kept him till they could come and pay their respect to their father. For the last time.
I called the funeral home but the package I had bought meant nobody could see him or attend the cremation.
Buy cheap buy twice.
Today I got a refund and the middle dawter secured another six hundred quid to have him removed from the fridge and placed in a morgue where he could be seen.
The ashes will be displayed on his birthday in August, when we will have a celebration of his life.
Three days ago there was a fine little fellow in my bed. Now it’s empty.
I can’t sleep.
I’ve emptied his drawers. Piles pf socks and t-shirts. Braces and a silky cravat, which he wore as a joke.
People ask me how I am.
I don’t know.
I’ve got a sick feeling. I’ll never see him again.
I won’t hear his voice, his laugh, his northern twang.
After 50 years of partnering he’s fucked off.
I can’t sleep.
The cottage is silent and filled with his life; hats to shoes to jackets and coats.
The dawter found his false teeth next to the mattress and his bedside table. His teeth were jammed next to his watch.
The teeth will go but I’ve decided to keep his watch.
I’ll wear it and have him next to me.
The inevitable happened.