Anticipating...
Has he passed? Isn’t a normal way to answer the phone but it’s become my usual greeting when answering a phone call from my Mum.
My wonderful Dad, Stephen is poorly. So poorly.
I’d been writing at my local library when I got a call saying to come over to York and say goodbye. I immediately ran outside and was sick in the carpark. The carpark is near my slimming world group, that’s one way of getting a couple of pounds off I suppose. I stumbled home, walking into people and spilling a ginger nut latte all over my hands whilst crying.
Through tear filled eyes with a pounding heart I packed a bag and made my way over to York. Turns out I hadn’t even taken shoes and had packed 3 tubes of toothpaste, no underwear and 5 pairs of leggings.
Does knowing someone is dying make it better or worse? I get to say goodbye but I’m also watching someone fade away. Every time the phone rings I jump. And it’s been a fair few months now.
When Stephen and my Mum initially gathered us kids to pass on the news we heard a pop. It was my little nephews baby shark balloon popping, after months of cluttering up the house.
‘Thank fuck for that’ Stephen said. He’s always had a very understandable hatred for baby shark. We all laughed.
He then went on to tell us his cancer had returned. It had reached Stage 4 and there was nothing that could be done
Then there was silence.
‘At least we’ll get a staff family discount on the funeral’ Stephen looked expectantly at my brother in law, who nodded as if to say “yep, I’ll get that sorted on Monday at work’
My sisters husband is a funeral director and is brilliant in delicate situations but I don’t think he was prepared for my avalanche of questions. ‘During cremation is it true you bring home a cocktail of people in the urn?’ ‘What date will he die?’ Will looked at me, bewilderment in his eyes. ‘Lets just see how it all goes’ he said earnestly.
We all kicked ourselves, how didn’t we realise it was cancer? Stephen had been in pain and feeling crap for months. My sister felt awful for not working it out, she’s a vet nurse so kept saying she should have known. I did point out Stephen wasn’t a cat.
From the moment we were given the news it felt like entering another world, I became cancer obsessed. All my spare time went into following peoples cancer journeys on social media. My algorithm changed. My instagram feed was once filled with home interiors, European city breaks and cooking recipes was taken over by cancer. I felt I needed to take it all in as payback for not having cancer currently myself.
Song lyrics started to make sense and I began to realise that the world was sad. Everyone seemed to be dealing with something huge. I’d never lost a special person before. I didn’t feel ready to lose Stephen. There’s some people so important in our lives that we just assume they’ll always be there. Suddenly it dawned on me that nothing lasts forever, of course I’d heard that before but I’d never really taken it in before. A friend said to me ‘this is why it’s important to live each day like it’s your last’ that felt like pressure to me though, I didn’t want to spend each day jumping out pf an aeroplane. What if somedays I just want to watch shite telly and drink cups of tea.
Stephen said he didn’t want things to change, he wanted us to chat to him as normal and keep going about our lives.I tried being as normal as possible, Stephen and my mum had a tendency to always speak over one another but now we’d always listen to Stephen, he’d joke that dying had it’s perks. Each time we went back to York wasn’t sad, it was nice; nice to spend time together. Every time I went back to York I’d try and meet Stephens bizarre demands. Turkish delight in tissue paper, Lemon flavoured Jaffa cakes and pickled onions that are not too big, not too small, the liquid must be amber coloured and there must be peppercorns floating around.
7 jars of pickled onions later and his reviews were still less than perfect. I’d look at him, hopeful that this was the one. He’d scrunch his nose up and say ‘not the best I’ve had’
My Mum had given up ‘I’ve bought the sod 10 jars or so, none of them upto his standards. I tell you what, it’s a good job he’s dying, I cannea bare going into the garden centre again to get another jar’ she’d say in her Glaswegian accent.
She looked tired and was putting all her energy into feeding us because we were there a lot, she was constantly cooking.
Dark humour is what was keeping us all going. I offered to get Stephen a subscription to the New Yorker, they had a deal on for 12 months. ‘Ask if they do a 3 month subscription’ Stephen said with a sad twinkle in his eyes.
I write a lot about my family but Stephen has always said he didn’t want to be written about so I respected that. The other members seems to strangely love being written about though. One Saturday when I was visiting, we’d just had a huge dinner cooked by my mum when Stephen said to me ‘soon you’ll be allowed to write about me and I wont be able to complain. Go ahead write about me’
I put my hand on his and said how much we were all going to miss him. He shook my hand off his and said ‘oh I’m getting sick of all this’. I’m pleased I said it but it didn’t need to be said again.
For the first time in the 26 years I’d known Stephen he was sporting a beard, it suited him but he was sick of it dipping into his coffee cup, so he shaved off the moustache bit. He now looked Amish, all he was missing was a straw hat and a thatched roof. I know he wanted us to carry on as normal with him but for fuck sake he wasn’t making it easy for us.
When I arrived in York with my useless packing my mum explained to me that Stephen now had a syringe driver fitted and would be going into the hospice first thing tomorrow morning. This made my heart sink. I’d been dreading this. From my instagram cancer
obsession I knew what this meant. I went upstairs to see Stephen. He was lying in bed with an untuned in radio crackling away. He was wearing baggy pyjamas and called me by my sisters name. He looked so small and vulnerable. It was then that I realised I’d already lost my dad. The Stephen I remembered was a big 6’3 man that was always in charge, always independent and never seen in pyjamas. I sat with him for a while, we chatted on and off, tears rolling down my cheeks as I listened to his rattling chest. After a few hours I switched with Will and went downstairs to be with everyone else. Will sat upstairs with Stephen and they were quiet together for about 40 minutes. In Will’s training to be a funeral director he’d been told to always take the lead from the other person and that a silence should be embraced and you shouldn’t fill the other persons ears with unnecessary waffle if you didn’t have anything of importance to say. Will thought he’d spent a nice bit of time with his dear father inlaw he was ever so fond of. He tapped Stephen on the shoulder and said ‘I’m just off downstairs’ As Will was leaving the room Stephen murmured and said ‘bring someone up who has some decent conversation’. Will told us all what Stephen had said, I burst out laughing. I’d spent months feeling upset that we couldn’t take Stephen on a big holiday and make final memories but I realised all of this was final memories. Even now he was still making us laugh and being ‘Stephen’
For the past year my chest has felt so heavy like it's being weighed down by bricks.
The next morning we got a call to say the hospice bed was ready. We all went together to settle Stephen in. What a nice room! Balcony with a view of the trees, and a fancy bathroom. My mum kept joking that she wanted to stay as well.
When the dessert trolley came round my brother jumped up and enthusiastically said ‘oooh I’d love one!’ The nurse explained the puddings were just for patents. My brother said he’d just have whatever was left. 30 mins later the same nurse came back in with the trolley. There was trifle, lemon meringue pie and cheesecake left. My brother tucked into his trio of sweet treats whilst Stephen asked the nurses if he could be given some ‘formal attire’ the staff with a look of disbelief said ‘no’ Stephen protested ‘well what if I want to pop out’. They calmly reminded him he was in a hospice and there would be no ‘popping out’.
I put on a brave smile as I kissed his forehead and said goodbye. As I was on the train home I got a text from him saying ‘Jelly babies - big bag, raspberries- not too soft and The Times newspaper’.
So now, we wait. God, I’ll miss him.