7 weeks tomorrow. I so clearly remember getting that call at 7am as the night nurse was finishing her shift. I knew it was coming but I was selfish, I wanted a couple more hours of just me and you, so I went in on my own. I'd only left you just over 8 hours ago but already you were going. You were in so much pain, you kept putting your hand over your heart as if to tell me how much it hurt, and you didn't understand why the nurses hadn't given you your morphine. They need a doctor to sign off, I explained to you, but I still badgered the nurses to speed things up. They were so kind and understanding. I'd been with you for nearly 2 months in that ward but that day they looked at me with nothing but pity and sadness in their eyes and that's how I knew it was the end. I held your hand and cleaned your arms and hands and face with wipes to cool you down. Your body was in overdrive trying to stay alive, even though you wanted to go.
Your family came to visit and I couldn't face seeing them. I knew what was going to happen on an instinctive, almost primal level, my body was preparing itself for your depature. I sat in that cafe, the one you told me to go to to get a hot chocolate and cheer myself up, and I sat there knowing your brothers and sisters were with you, their hearts breaking as they comforted you. I wish I had seen you more that day, I wish someone had said you could still hear, I would have shut the whole world out and told you a million times just how much I love you. That everything was going to be okay, that soon you wouldn't be in pain anymore.
I left that cafe and I came back to your bedside and I watched your body shut down. I started talking, to tell you that everything was going to be okay, that I was going to figure my life out, that your other children were going to do great things, and then you opened your eyes. They were flickering back and forth and it scared me so much that I had to get a nurse. I knew you were going, and even though I so badly wanted to hold your hand, to be there, I couldn't go back in. I feel so sorry that I wasn't there. You weren't alone, but I wasn't there. I was on the other side of the curtain, listening to your last struggling breaths. Within minutes, you were gone. Those loud, raggedly breaths stopped so quickly that the silence was like a freight train, spelling out my biggest fear – Mum is dead. I kissed your forehead and I said thank you for everything and then I left. I had been with you for such a long time that I needed to preserve those memories, not to stay with your broken body, the body that failed you. I had to take the very essence of you and put it in my pocket, to carry it with me, to keep you with me at all times, not lying in a hospital bed where you had no independence, no real dignity, no freedom.
The last 7 weeks have passed so quickly that I'm shocked at how much I have managed to pack in. We, your three children, planned your funeral ourselves, we sorted out your entire estate, we cried, we laughed, we went on walks and we took you with us, scattering your ashes in our shared favourite place. I keep a picture of you and me on my bedside table, I think I was about 3 in that picture, you're holding me and we're both beaming at the camera. I keep your memorial service leaflet and another picture of us on my desk, tucked into the frame of the beautiful poster you gave me last Christmas. I kiss those pictures multiple times a day. I blow you kisses all the time. I talk to you, I tell you what I'm doing, I wear your ring and your dressing gown and your clothes and I keep your hairbrush by my bed. I don't cry enough but I miss you every single second of the day. My body misses you when my brain forgets to, a habitual ache in my heart, a lump in my throat, a nausea in my stomach. I love you, I love you, I love you a million, billion, trillion times over and over and over. It's been 7 weeks but I am doing okay. I know how proud of you are of me. I feel your love radiating within me all the time and sometimes, every now and then, I see your face and I feel you sending me a little sign, "keep going sweetie, I love you loads".
