6 Dec 2016
I gave away his food today.
Not all of it. I kept the bottles of truffle oil. I remember him opening the package in his bed, smelling the white and the black in turn, delighted at the thought of me finishing risottos off with a flourish even though we both knew (but did not acknowledge) he wouldn't be eating them with me.
But I gave away the soup, the unopened packets of biscuits, even his beloved Marmite. And the walnuts. He was going to make me a Ligurian walnut sauce. He asked me to order the ingredients in my grocery delivery and I did. He wanted to do this on the Thursday night, the last night he was really coherent, really himself. But I put him off, saying he was tired after the day's activities, we would do it on Friday evening instead, it would be a special thing to do to end the week.
But on Friday night, he barely managed ten minutes in front of the TV before going back to bed. I think it was the Thursday-Friday night that he woke me at 2.30 being sick all over the room and I called out the district nurses, but I can't remember precisely what happened when, not any more. I do remember him shouting at me to go away and two seconds later pulling me in for a hug. That was on Saturday, when I still thought subcutaneous fluids might help him start to make sense again.
I wish I had let him make the walnut sauce instead of hovering, worrying, fussing, thinking he had overdone it earlier. Because he never did. He was basically insensible from Saturday morning on, and after screaming "No, no" when I told him on Sunday morning that I was having him admitted to hospice, he never said another word to me.
So our conversation, our twenty year conversation, that's how it ended - "no, no". No, don't take me out of our house, our refuge. Don't take me there where the staff are hovering like vultures, waiting for me to give up when I'm not ready yet.
Don't let me die. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. For all of it, for giving away your food which we ordered with such hope, that you would be home and well long enough to consume it all before the inner enemy consumed you. For not letting you cook one last time. For letting you die. I know in my head I could not control that but in my heart I feel I let you down most fundamentally.
I doubt the food bank wants those walnuts, but it is nearly Christmas. And I could not ever look at them again, my love.
