Waiting for Death.

He is sleeping again. Drifting in and out of consciousness as one walks between rooms. Around him discarded tissues lay unnoticed as his grey hand reaches for another to whip the spittle from his face that isn't there. The magazines, books phone and paper sit, unread, unwanted and unused, yet still the glasses rest on his face as if soon he will once again take up reading the pages he flicks through rather than flick through the pages he looks at.

This man of strength, this man of power no longer moves at my coming. No longer does a hand reach out to grasp mine in companionship. That vice like grip that so hounded me when young. Now, his breathing laboured, his heart slow, he rests. Waiting for the sun to go down.

This ward where he lays, this ‘green mile’ for the un-judged; No trail is waited for here, no appeal to be worked on and here only one sentence is expected. Here, though the lights are bright and the floors sparkle with a fresh clean everyday; that no keys are used to pass through the open doors to each room; here no bars cross the windows which look out over well kept gardens. Yet here, like the mile, we wait for death.

Coughing, he picks up the magazine to read, his moment of sleep forgotten, my presence also. But soon he lays it down, the words and pictures offering him no comfort. Instead he reaches for the button that calls the nurse. Nothing is wrong, his needs are small and well met; he is comfortable and well looked after. Yet the button means comfort and security and for the lonely and scared the button is a line to life.

As I leave he blindly watches me go. I no longer know how much his mind remains or his body entraps him. But I know he is scared and I know he is alone, as we all will be, at the end. I walk from the hospice and sign my name on exit. Here we can see a record of all those and the time they have spent in waiting with those soon lost. It’s a record I want to fill out; bureaucracy that seems to prove my love and my time spent… in waiting. Walking back to the station I marvel at how in this western world, where no structure aids the support of the ailing at home, we find placing them in homes of care the next choice.

I want to take my father home with me… I want to hold him in my arms and fulfil a long ago promise. I want to say goodbye in my own way: respectfully, with honour and with love.