I want to write about the night my Dad died. Not because I think it will make for a particularly pleasant read, but because the words need to escape my head.

In the aftermath of death, no one asks you about the gory details. They’ll listen to your anecdotes about the person who’s passed. They’ll ask how you’re coping with the grief, how you’re holding up, that sort of thing. But they won’t ask what happened that night, how you felt, what you said, where your mind wandered as you sat in the dimly lit hospital room with your father’s dead body.

I’ll start at the end because this is, after all, about the ending.

I wasn’t there when he took his last breath. I was in the car with my Mum, making nervous chit chat about whatever it was the radio had to offer just before midnight on that cold November night. We’d made the same journey from our home in West London to the imposing QE II hospital in Welyn Garden countless times over the last few days. Even in her sleep deprived state my Mum could have done the journey with her eyes closed.

Earlier that day I’d watched a 10 month old Izzy crawl all over the ugly grey flooring that ran throughout the hospital. I’d tried to feed her lunch in the cafe on the ground floor, apologising for the mess all over the table as we left. Dried apricots and some kind of orange-hued mush mingling together in a heap on the cheap formica table. Defeated by Izzy’s tightly closed mouth and disinterest, I climbed back up the stairs and let her loose once more. My sister and I watched as she went round and round in circles in front of the lifts that stood to the left of the ward’s entrance.

At one point the large shiny doors sprung open and a black man in blue hospital scrubs stepped out, wheeling a large metal coffin-like object behind him. It wasn’t rectangular like a regular coffin but triangular, almost pyramid like, and it was that dirty cream colour that seems to be standard issue within the confines of tired NHS buildings. I noticed just how normal the man pushing the ominous contraption looked, not how you would imagine someone who works in a morgue at all.  My sister and I stepped back and I hoisted Izzy up from the floor and on to my hip. We tried not to think about what the ugly coffin-on-wheels was for. I inwardly prayed my Dad would never see the inside of it. But I already knew he would.

The previous morning I’d sat in my Dad’s living room. His first wife, my mother, was there, silent and respectful.  I looked at my step-mum and younger sister as I sat in the blue arm chair in the corner of the room, willing them to know what I was already certain of.

Dad was dying.

We all had to accept this fact, stop trying to figure out how he was going to live, and help him find a good way to die. Let him know it was OK to go. I tried to speak, fearing my sister would hate me for saying the words out loud, accuse me of lying, of undermining Dad’s status as a ‘fighter’. You’re not allowed to be anything else when you’re only 50 and you’ve got cancer.

He’s not going to beat this. But that doesn’t mean he’s lost. Let’s get him home. Wouldn’t he want to die here, in his own bed, with us? We have to fight for him now.

I can’t say for certain, but I think denial reigned. Perhaps I wasn’t clear enough, firm enough, brutal enough. The doctors certainly weren’t. Why didn’t they shake my step-mother, shout at her, slap her, make her see, bring her face to face with the reality of the situation? He’s going. You’ve got to let him go. This is it. We’re done.

They didn’t. That’s why we drove home on Sunday night. Ate supper together. Talked about driving back again in the morning, about spending another day hanging around the hospital, drinking too much tea and avoiding eye-contact with the doctors and nurses, lest their gaze should tell us what we didn’t want to know.

Carl and I put Izzy to bed. I think we watched TV. I don’t really remember. There are lots of gaps in my memory. Deep black voids where my feelings are warm and safe.

I remember lying in bed, sometime after 10.30pm, and hearing my mobile ring. I grabbed it, not with fear or concern for what the call might contain, but because I didn’t want the shrill ring tone to wake Izzy who was asleep in the corner of our bedroom.

‘I can’t promise you he’ll still be alive tomorrow. You might want to come now, to be here with him’.

I felt like I was crumbling. Like bits of me were falling away, my body disintegrating, turning to dust in Carl’s arms. I didn’t know what to do, I didn’t know if I wanted to be there when it happened. I wanted to ask my Dad what he would do in the same situation.

I can remember climbing into the car. Just me and my Mum. My sister didn’t want to go. Carl was charged with looking after her. I don’t know how they spent those hours of not knowing. They were both in bed by the time we got home in the very early hours of the following morning. My sister was asleep on a mattress on her bedroom floor, an unusual habit that went unquestioned by those she lived with. My Mum and I crawled in beside her in the dark and told her it was over. I don’t remember the sound of her tears. I don’t remember leaving her to go into my own room. I just remember Carl sitting up in bed, and me not being able to cry anymore. I fell into a deep sleep. When I woke the following morning it was like loosing him all over again, coming to and realising it hadn’t been a bad dream.

We had pulled into the empty hospital car park just after midnight. The radio clicked off and we moved to get out of the car. I saw my step-mother walking towards us through the mist. I forced a smile and armed myself with an apparently cheerful greeting. But as I stepped on to the icy tarmac she shook her head and suddenly the ground was rushing towards me.

My memories are silent, all I can see is my mouth open wide in horror. I think I screamed, or wailed. I know I cried those heavy tears that leave your chest aching for days, your eyes swollen and red, your face puffy and sore.

I was helped to my feet and escorted through the empty corridors of the hospital. My step-mother held my hand and my mother walked behind us, still silent and respectful. We walked by the cafe on the ground floor, ascended the staircase and passed the lifts just outside the ward. Dad was in a private room on the left-hand side. Rows of patient-filled beds stood opposite the closed door. They were cloaked in darkness, but you could see the eyes of the other sick men and women, trying not to stare at the family of the recently dead man.

My uncle and aunt were already in the room, their eyes wide like an animal caught in the headlights of a fast approaching car. My Dad was in bed. I screamed again, or at least let out a deep loud sob, and the others tried to hush me. The ward was silent but for my wailing. What must the other patients have thought? I didn’t care at that moment, I’d lost control of my actions. My head wasn’t working anymore.

And then I was alone. I moved closer to the bed and looked at his face. He really did look like he was just sleeping, like he could stir any moment, like he might sit up and rub his eyes before turning to me with a smile. ‘Hey kiddo, how you doing?’ he’d say. But his chest wasn’t moving up and down, his lungs weren’t filling with air. His lips looked too dark, tinged with purple and beginning to turn blue. His skin appeared papery thin, almost transparent. My mind makes it greyer than it was, but I know it looked wrong, different.

I tried to tell him things. The things I thought you should say to a dead person, the things they would want to hear. You’re the best, Dad. I love you. There was no past tense yet.

Then, I’ll miss you. Goodbye. You can go now.

We all sat together in the family room while the nurses did what they had to. I tried not to think about the metal coffin. Or the morgue. Or my Dad’s body on a cold metal slab, in a bag, labeled like a piece of lost property.

We drove home. It was quite foggy and the roads were icy. My mum drove carefully. The radio played slit-your-wrist music for insomniacs and people who were only awake because someone had died. The journey was all at once familiar and completely unrecognisable.

None of it felt real, but it was.

And just like that, he was gone.

Loveaudrey xxx