Chapter 14

‘Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.’ Charles R. Swindoll

And so, warrants a longer chapter. I make no apologies. This time needs to be captured and shared.

In early 1999, I made some pretty naff decisions. If you are going to make so many naff decisions as I did, you might as well live with them, deal with them, and somehow move on from them. With my divorce behind me, and needing a fresh start, I decided to change my surname by statutory declaration. At the time, this significant change in my life did hurt, I had been married for a long time. Nonetheless, I employed a solicitor; went to court and changed my surname on 29th January 1999. I didn’t want to change my first names as mum and dad had given me those, but I did need something different, so I used my middle name. I have a sister called Catherine, so I knew, at least in family life, I would remain Anita.

At the time, I was feeling particularly despondent. I had previously been involved in two car crashes, neither my fault. I was living somewhere I didn’t want to live and in a job I didn’t enjoy. So, what did I do? I changed everything. I wanted a bit of adventure and so when the opportunity to work in an international summer school camp came along, I took it. I gave up my home, my job and my role as a special in the police force. I can’t actually believe that not only did I travel on a plane for the first time alone, I got myself halfway across the world to where I was to work. It was a long train journey once off the plane. It truly was beautiful and seemed like a really big adventure, but the job was lonely and isolating and I was terribly homesick. We were based near a lake and it was particularly humid, so it was no wonder I had ants crawling in my trainers; not very nice. I was bitten by a spider; not sure what it was, but I definitely needed antibiotics. But, to be fair, it wasn’t all bad. It was where I heard the song ‘I will’ by the Beatles for the very first time and this is now one of my favourite songs. The children used to sing accompanied by the teacher, who played guitar. A more haunting melody I feel sure, I will never hear again. The children were fun to be with and I did join in with basketball, in particular. Not the singing, I would have scared even the strongest of them off. Sadly, when I arrived back home, the worst was yet to come. I just didn’t know it.

I arrived home just in time to see my sister Catherine give birth to my nephew, which was lovely, but that joy was not to last. I was in Ilkley when I received the phone call, 10 days later that was quite literally going to change my life and that of my family, forever.

My dad had been admitted to hospital. I wasn’t too concerned at first as my dad had frequently been admitted, having suffered several mini-strokes; but when I arrived, I realised this time was different. This time my dad wasn’t sat up in bed, he was unconscious, and according to the Glasgow Coma Scale, a tool used to determine level of consciousness, he had a score of eight, which indicates a traumatic brain injury. The ultimate diagnosis being a subarachnoid haemorrhage. A catastrophic stroke. A poor prognosis awaited. There was no ICU bed available at the hospital so he was transferred to one that had. This just happened to be in the same hospital in which I’d trained, to an area in which I’d practiced, and to a bed in which I’d cared for others.

Being unprepared, I walked into ICU with my family and witnessed a scene I’ll probably never forget. The doors of hell had just been opened and I’d walked in. My dad, my lovely, imperfect dad, who we’d waited eagerly as children, with mistletoe in hand on Christmas Eve to walk through the door; who had sung Danny Boy, often the worse for wear; who could make me disappointed in myself just by his lack of disapproval, who never judged me, only loved me, lay in an ICU bed, vulnerable. His life in the lap of the gods.

Being a nurse did not prepare me for what I saw. With half his hair shaved off and a probe literally sticking out of his head, he no longer had his teddy boy quiff. I stood there trying to hold it together, fearful of what might happen if I lost control.

He was alive. There was hope. But then there wasn’t. A blood clot had become embedded in his leg. It was cruel; sadistic, without compassion. The cards we had all been dealt made it impossible to win. The consultant would not operate and rightly so, my dad would have died in the operating theatre. No family by his side holding his hand, saying goodbye; instead surrounded by four clinical walls, stainless steel instruments, nameless masked faces in sterile scrubs peering down at my dad. Compassion perhaps, but no love. We didn’t want that. My dad wouldn’t have wanted that.

So, on 30th July, his life support machine was switched off. The beeping of the machine told us he was alive, but not for long, his illness incompatible with life. So, my dad, his face calm, with no outward signs of pain, died with all his family around him on 31st July 1999. My poor dad, like his father, dead at 57.

I would never speak with him again. Never hear his voice again. Never see him smile. I would never hug him, watch him grow older; entwine his future with mine. I needed to embrace the last few moments I had with him, before we walked away, before he left our lives forever, at least in human form.

My one regret that fateful day, when the consultant switched off the life support machine, was that I never asked about organ donation. I wish I’d had the courage, but I didn’t. I wasn’t sure if mum could have coped with the question and so the fleeting moment passed. We were never asked, so perhaps it wouldn’t have been possible, but I will never know. Some good may have come out of dad’s death, if only I’d had the courage to ask. But that day I was my father’s daughter; not someone’s nurse.

I don’t know why but I always thought I would be ringing my mum to tell her she had to come to the hospital quick, and that’s what I had to do. I don’t know to this day how I got the words out. I remember using the pay phone in the hospital to phone my mum and a woman asked me if she could use it first because she needed a taxi to get home; there was no urgency. I told her my dad was dying. Dad was cremated on 6th August and his ashes placed under a yellow rose bush in the church gardens where my first husband and I married in 1985. The grief, and the numbness that accompanied my dad’s death was unbearable, and it took a long time simply to deal with it.

The rose bush for me at least, no longer represents where my dad’s ashes are buried. Instead I have created a beautiful place in our garden where all those who have come and gone can be remembered.

Anyone who has ever lost a loved one understands the deep sense of shock that prevails; like a numbness. Time stands still, as though holding on to that moment. No tears; not always; just a deep defining moment when you know your life, the life you knew, has gone forever. It’s hard to describe, but those who know; know. Grief is universal, threatening to overwhelm. It erupts like the crashing of a wave. It threatens to steal your breath.  Tears when they do come are intense. No holding back, breathing for a moment becomes impossible; breath snatched away from you.

Your heart is breaking and you know it. Such grief is a consequence of love. You don’t grieve for someone with the same degree of intensity, without having ton’s of love for them. You know, deep down in those recesses infrequently visited, that your life has to continue, but how easy is that going to be? There’s a yearning; a disbelief. This isn’t happening. It can’t be happening. It is happening. It really has happened. It strangles you. It kicks you in the teeth. Function becomes near impossible.

I dreamt about my dad for a while, but those dreams soon faded. They were trying to tell me something. To look after my mum.

Ruminations, could have; should have, threatened to crush my very soul. What if?… What if I’d been there when he collapsed? I might have been able to save him. But I knew enough to know that this was impossible. Such thoughts didn’t gain a foothold, I gently let them drift in and out until I dismissed them completely.

My stepdaughter Caroline married Steve on the same date my dad died in 2015, and my great niece was born a year later in 2016, creating bitter sweet memories. My mum went back to work two weeks after my dad died and as I was working agency, I had to do the same. We didn’t work for organisations who paid full pay for being off. Mum also had to move house.

I’ll never quite know how we all got through it. Although as they say, life has to go on. And it did. As with all families, death is inevitable as older generations make way for new. And our generation is no different.

I met Mike three weeks later. It was challenging, but we got through it and I have
as my story shows, come a long way since that awful day in 1999. Today my life is full and enriched, made possible by my relationship with Mike, my perseverance and a willingness to take up opportunities as they arise.