My father died this year, on May 28th. There were only twelve days between hearing the news that he was sick and the moment he took his last breath.
Twelve days.
While reflecting on this period, which I still do, it’s this detail of twelve days that keeps circling in my mind.
In those twelve days I took my father to my parents home from the hospital on a Saturday. Home, so he could call his youngest daughter and tell her the bad news. Pancreatic cancer without any hope of recovery. A couple of weeks, maybe a few months.
My sister lives in Australia and asked my father if he wanted to see her kids. He said yes. I left my parents on their own and went to my own home.
Home, where my daughter was waiting for me to give her a call and tell her about our meeting with the doctor. She had called me already, right at the moment her grandfather was talking with her aunt in Australia. Because she thought I was taking too long.
And she was right, I was. But I didn’t want to tell het on the phone. Especially because she was at home alone and because the news I had to tell her was so unexpected. Her grandfather had checked into the hospital a couple of days earlier, because of his groin rupture. A simple rupture, but the doctor didn’t trust his bloated abdomen. They started to remove abdominal fluid. A lot of fluid. With this, his energy left him too.
During these days we visited him every day until Friday, when my mother and I were called in for a meeting with the doctor the next day. A family meeting they called it. That Saturday we were told that her husband, my father would not get better.
At home with my daughter. Crying. Emotional. Sad and most of all shocked. When her father and brother came home from soccer, we told them the bad news. Together we went to my parents home. That night my mother returned my father to the hospital.
Two days later, Monday, a new meeting with a different doctor. She delivered even worse news and gave my father an estimate of a couple of days or maybe two weeks left to live.
Stunned.
How do you deal with news like this? How must this have affected my father?
My sister called to tell us about the flights she had booked for herself and the children. They would leave Australia on Wednesday and arrive in The Netherlands on Thursday. My mother and I had decided not to tell her about our last meeting with the doctor. It was impossible for her to fly earlier with her kids and the plane wouldn’t fly any faster. We knew it would trouble her enormously while taking the long journey, worrying she would arrive too late.
My father had two big fears. That his youngest daughter wouldn’t be here on time and that he would die in pain.
He left the hospital as soon as possible and went home for his remaining time. A bed was placed in the living room, oxygen and pain medication arrived. Home care services, friends, neighbours, general practice doctor and family helped my father and my mother.
Everything was ready when his youngest daughter and his youngest grandchildren came to hime, straight from the airport. They arrived in time.
We were given one week together.
