Each day one of us sits by my darling wife’s bedside. My children have joined me in my vow that while she has breath in her body she won’t ever be alone.
But each day the cursed cancer steals more of her from us and we can only watch.
She hasn’t eaten anything substantial in over a month, now sips very limited liquid and her mind wanders into a ‘dementia’ world.
For her, and for the family I suck my tears back, adjust what remains of a battered mask and plough on.
But yesterday the hospital Chaplin called by and I collapsed into a incoherent mass of tears.
Thirty plus years with many ups but too many downs it seems as I look back. Thirty years of a shared life, with me getting so much wrong, but her sticking with me.
I can’t imagine coming close to survival once her final breath is drawn. For her, I want a decent into a sleep of release. I selfishly want her to linger. While she breaths I can pretend their is hope, knowing that there isn’t.
A quote from MASH keeps playing around in my head, “suicide is painless” and I wonder if it is and if it would free me from the onrushing hell of loneliness that looms....
How can the god my parents worship do this to me? But then he gave my dad dementia and death, my mum the living hell of altzimers, but leave me fit and well to watch his handiwork? How can all we have suffered be right or be fair?
“suicide is painless”
