Last Chance

I’ve just got home and I have to write this right now. I have to get it out of me before I puke it out. I need this moment to mean something because it just doesn’t mean enough to me.

My dad is dying. He has been dying for about 3 months now. He didn’t turn up to work for a couple days and one of his work friends stopped by to see how he was doing. It always amazes me that he has any friends considering what a bastard he is, but anyway, his friend found him in bed unable to move, so called an ambulance. The first I heard was a few days later, and it was that he was having his foot amputated because of his diabetes. I felt no sympathy or surprise at this as he had been a diabetic for a long time and he still drinks a lotta beer and eats a lot of ice cream. He has already lost a fair few toes to that half assed disease.

I ignored the email that told me - I didn’t think there was much I could do. But then a month or so ago, I got another one telling me that he was fucked. I mean really fucked. His organs were failing, he had water in his lungs and there was a lot of other shit I can’t remember. He was so fucked that they still hadn’t taken his foot as he wouldn’t have survived it. I went home from work the second I read that email after I left my boss a note. Kathy came and met and comforted me for a while, but it was only when my boss called to check if I was ok that I broke down. He was meant to have only a 15 percent chance of survival at that point, but that wasn’t even taking all of his ailments into account. It really cut me down. I’ve cried too much this year already.

Speaking of which, it just so happened that it was at exactly the time that I was having my final fight with Fred and Dee that I found this out. I had been waiting until I was entirely calm to email them and try to fix or end things and this news just made me not give so much of a fuck anymore so I just said what I had to say and boom it was over with them. Now that’s a fucking shame, but it is unrelated.

Anyway, my sister had asked me if I had anything to say to him, as it may be my last chance as he had an op in the morning. Fuck was that hard to come up with. Those last words. That summary of his life and what it meant to me. So I told her then held my breath until morning.

He survived and got moved to the long term ICU, which is where they put patients they don’t expect to get better. So we waited. And looked for a will. And waited.

And then he got better! All of a sudden he was a bit more coherent, and he was recovering from some of the many things killing him. I had made my peace with it, so when this news came it blew my motherfucking mind. Woo!

But then he got worse again. Awful in fact. Dying. My sister is all alone out there and the doctors make her make all the decisions, but there was one which she couldn’t make alone. Should we sign a Do Not Resuscitate order?

Thinking about this killed me. Well it should have, but in all honesty, I feel so removed from the man that I just didn’t want to make the decision. I mean who am I to decide the length of his life?

I’m his son. And that’s why the decision has got worse as he has. We’re past DNRs now. We have to decide if we should pull the plug. He’s in so much pain and there is so little of his mind left that its not a question really.

So back to today and this moment. Back to why it should be important. Today is the day that I have to phone my brother so that we can arrange a date to go half way round the world to help my sister kill my father. Today’s the day I have to agree to watch him die. I have no last words for him, no conversation that I wish we had. I just don’t think my sister should go through this alone, and I’m fairly sure my brother needs to have a few more moments with that old man.

So I have to watch my dad die.

I really don’t think that he deserves to have his kids around him weeping when he passes, but I also know that Gerry needs to see him one more time. He needs to say goodbye. again. He needs another chance.