The digital clock above the bed showed 8.43pm at the devastating, heart-breaking time when Julie Marie Lea took her final breath. The date was Thursday, June 20, 2019 – coincidentally, my soulmate had died on my 45th birthday. I was holding her left hand gently and stroking her. One last kiss on her forehead to say goodbye.
On the other side of the bed was her older brother David. He had been sitting loyally next to Julie almost entirely for those 36 hours when she was finally out of pain at St Michael’s Hospice, Basingstoke. He didn’t want to let her go. None of us did.
We both looked up at the clock at the same time. We knew what had happened. There were no words. It was all over. So suddenly.
Julie’s parents John and Linda were also in the room along with David’s partner Eileen. The family had arrived in Hampshire the previous morning and we knew this tragic moment was going to happen pretty quickly. The final leg of this journey was always going to be a matter of hours or days – certainly not weeks or months.
The reality hit me on Monday evening during a private chat with a psychologist at Basingstoke and North Hampshire Hospital. There was nothing more that could be done to save Julie’s life. She would not be coming back home. I knew she wouldn’t make it until the weekend. Maybe she wanted to wait for my birthday and say farewell.
We had only been down there for a couple of weeks. At this stage, initially she was supposed to be starting the long road to recovery from major surgery to remove an appendix tumour. But she was never given time to fight against it. There was no chance of winning this battle of life and death.
‘It’s not fair!’ Several times, sitting in her hospital bed and feeling the unbearable pain, she would make that declaration. ‘Mark, I’ve got cancer.’ What’s the answer? There was nothing to say, really. ‘I know.’ Occasionally I would add ‘sorry’ because there was nothing that anybody could do now. Everyone had done their best and sometimes that’s not simply good enough.
Julie was given the best opportunity thanks to top-class care. Ultimately, though, it was only a very short battle against cancer. That doesn’t make it easier or fairer. She could have been fighting for years – instead, it was only a few weeks.
She didn’t even celebrate her 40th birthday. The special day was nearly eight months away. That’s certainly not fair.
It wouldn’t have surprised Julie’s family and friends to learn that she was already making plans and starting the countdown to her birthday. Of course, inevitably, there was also a list to go with it – neatly written in green, purple and green ink. Tragically, due to illness, she never even reached the halfway stage of those ideas and suggestions to be achieved.
40 before 40!
At the end of the list was an extra special bonus: 41 – meet Gary Barlow!
Julie wrote six short poems and only started to plan ticking off some of those items on the list. On her final afternoon, she was told that I had somehow agreed to do a skydive with Julie’s close friend Alex in aid of charity. It was one of the last conversations that she would have heard.
Following a series of messages, Alex and I had arranged to talk at 8pm. The missed calls came when Julie’s breathing patterns began to change worryingly. I pressed the emergency alarm in her room to get medical help. Immediately, the nurses knew what was coming. Again, it happened very quickly and the pain was over.
Only a few hours earlier, thankfully we had shared some time together while the rest of the family took a well-earned break from the bedside. There is some small consolation in knowing that Julie heard me reading out all the heartfelt messages from her wonderful group of friends which had been collected on my phone over a couple of days.
Over the weekend, it became clear that Julie’s health was declining rapidly. I saw it first hand but everyone else must have realised that something was terribly wrong when she stopped replying to messages on her phone. It was highly unusual for her.
Just before we left home together for the final time, Julie had set up a small group of ‘favourites’ on my phone with instructions for those friends to receive full updates on what would have been major surgery and a spell in the intensive care unit. There was also a private group on Facebook where she had chosen who would find out first what was happening. Julie’s page is still being updated with tributes.
So there was absolutely no doubt in my mind over what needed to be done immediately after the hospice staff had cleaned Julie’s body and put her in clean pyjamas for the chapel of rest. Briefly I went inside to see her for the last time and, after probably 15 seconds, I needed to step away. It was too much emotionally for me.
It was around 10.30pm when I moved slowly and privately into a family lounge at the hospice to start making those phone calls to Julie’s friends and my family. What can you say? It’s all over and we’re all hurting so much because, as she said, it’s not fair.
David made the call to Chambers & Brighty funeral directors in Wellingborough, we went back to the accommodation overnight and gathered again the next morning for a discussion which none of us could have expected. Burial or cremation – what would Julie want? We never had the conversation, why would we when she was only in her 30s? We agreed on cremation and returned to the hospice.
The family set off home and I made an appointment to get Julie’s death certificate that morning because I certainly didn’t want to return to Basingstoke early next week. When I left the town around noon, I was alone and immediately I knew that I would need lots of support.
