My husband passed away in my arms. He had been in hospital for a little over a month. The end was fast and in retrospect, when he understood that he wasn't going to recover, when he lost hope, he was ready to die.
There was no specific conversation around saying 'goodbye' to one another. However, in many ways that goodbye took place in specific moments starting on the Thursday and ending on Sunday evening. I had been in the city and arrived at the hospital on the edge of the city late lunch time. He was asleep and I hovered about the room until he became aware of my presence and opened his eyes.
He immediately, and for the first time, took out of the bed sheets his right arm. He had had a stroke and was paralyzed down the left side of his body. He brought his hand up to meet my hand and together, holding holds, he said, 'I missed you.'
'I won't leave again,' I told him. Later in the evening I told him I was going home by Uber to gather some things, and I would be back in an hour.
When I arrived back, he was asleep but the nurse on duty told me that she had told him where I had gone and that I would be back soon. She had asked him where he was, and he had correctly told her where he was. This was the first time he could do that. Up until then he had been on a plane, in another country, in Indonesia. He had been anywhere and everywhere except that hospital.
In fact, I had slept with him on a mattress on the floor for several days prior to this but I had caught a virus in there and was coughing and very unwell, so I had gone home to sleep in my bed, returning to the hospital each day by tram to spend the day with him.
Now, I was there until the end.
I think it was Friday when I climbed into bed with him. I had to wiggle into the smallest space beside him so that I didn't hurt him. He woke. It was very difficult for him to form words, but I clearly heard him say,
'I love you so much.'
And then he said, 'You are strong'.
Knowing that all he could do at this point was to reassure me that I would be all right on my own, that's what he said. That's my interpretation.
Everyone came to say goodbye. Of course. My daughter discharged herself early from having her daughter to show the babe to her father. We smothered him with love in every way we knew how. I told him that only good men get this much love. I never stopped touching him, massaging his neck, holding his hand.
When the children had said their final goodbyes, we were left in the room alone until the nurses came to change his position. He stopped breathing and then he started breathing again and then I held him in my arms.
'I love you, I love you. I love you' I kept saying as he gasped, took his final breath and passed away.
Grief is an extraordinary thing. We gave him the best send off. We all talked about him in the church - me first, his children, his six siblings. It was a glorious send off as the coffin was lifted from the church to the bagpiper playing 'Scotland the Brave'.
At first, I thought I would get through this all right. Feelings were under control, until they weren't, until the loss was felt over the past few days, the enormity of it.
He was my Protector. My love. My life.
I know he would want me to be all right, for us to all be all right. And we shall be. My grief ebbs and flows. Today I am a mess, a sobbing mess, but it feels right to really feel into it. To acknowledge the loss. He was my soulmate by just shy of 50 years and I miss him sorely. This is love. This is what it is to be human.
