My funny has gone

I’m funny, I know I’m funny because people tell me I’m funny. Funny ha ha or funny odd? Nobody has made it clear so I’m going with ha ha. I like being funny, I like being able to cheer folks up when they’re blue, I consider it my duty to do all I can in the cheering up department. The thing is, it’s been rather difficult of late.

You see, I’ve lost my Dad. Not as in misplaced no, more in the forever kind of lost. Dad had been poorly for a very long time but, due to either his life long phobia of all things Dr related or his misguided desire to save us all the worry, he left it too late to get help.

I’d been worried for years, angry too. What the hell was going to happen to him? How long would he suffer? What were we going to do without him? Why wouldn’t he go to the Drs for us? This was a man who’s every waking thought was for us, Mum, my brother and me, yet he wouldn’t get help, not even for us. Underneath ‘selfless’ in the dictionary you’ll find my Dad but, once he got sick, his actions appeared utterly selfish and so shockingly out of character.

We asked, occasionally begged, him to go. On one occasion he even went so far as to promise he’d go. We were on a family holiday in Wales, the last we would all go on, when The Husband had a wee word with him. Dad had shut him up by agreeing to go to the Drs when got home. He didn’t. That was August 2016.

Two years later I get a phone call from Mum, Dad had taken himself to the Drs as he was struggling to breathe. I dropped everything, in this case walking the dog, and I went to the Drs. To the lay person this would seem overkill but I knew that if he’d gone, willingly, he was dying or thought he was. My brother was close behind me, he also understood the seriousness of the situation.

Dad was booked in for a breathing test, you know the blow into a machine test, for the folowing week. The following week? We couldn’t believe it, this was a man on his last legs who could barely breathe and he’d been sent away. We all headed home but I nipped back into the surgery to tell the receptionist just how poorly he was, in case Dad had played it down, he was good at that, he’d been doing it for years. I was told the message would be passed on. I’m sure it was but it mattered not, at this point he was too far down the poorly road and we knew that.

Drs appointments followed, there were a couple of home visits because he couldn’t walk from the car to the surgery. At one appointment I’d had to find him a wheelchair and then answer the Drs questions because he didn’t have the breath to do so himself. It was at this appointment that the Dr questioned the swelling in his legs, two other Drs had been asked but we were told it was the steroids. This Dr took one look and said it was his heart and referred him to the hospital for a chest x-ray and a heart exam.

Dad saw the heart specialist chap for his results.

“Oh dear dear dear dear dear, his heart has gone and his lungs have gone” said the heart specialist chap.

Dad wasn’t allowed home that day. They jiggled with pills, did some tests and on the ninth day Dad walked, all by his onesie, out of the hospital and promtly headed back to work. On the ninth day Dad should have retired but he couldn’t as that’s what Dad did, he worked, he always worked come rain or shine, in sickness and in health and in more sickness.

Dad struggled on for another year, he should have been at home not at bloody work! The man wouldn’t be told and we all had to just carry on as if he wasn’t slowly getting sicker and sicker. It was the massive elephant in the room, we all knew it was there but couldn’t talk about it. Dad’s days got progressively shorter, he’d do half a day at work and be in bed by 9pm then that became an hour at work and be in bed by 6pm. We’d heard that he wasn’t doing anything at work, just looking out of the window. What was he thinking about? We’ll never know.

Thursday 21st November 2019 he left work in the morning, by the following Wednesday he was in A&E and he died on the Friday. We were there, my Mum, my brother and I but only just. We’d missed the call from the hospital telling us Dad wanted to see us because we were already on our way. We’d gone later because we knew his brother was visiting so we had arrived, due to a misjudged journey at rush hour, at the time when visitors aren’t allowed in, between 5.30 and 6.15pm. We’d actually gone into the hospital restaurant for something to eat. There was no panic as the day before they’d been talking about Dad coming home. My brother had sent a message to say he was in the car park moments before I received the text from The Husband telling me the hospital had left a message earlier.

Mum pushed her dinner away. I didn’t, it took me a few seconds to twig. I sent Mum up and said I’d wait for my brother, he took forever to come, turns out he’d had a nap in the car park while he waited for visiting to begin. Not surprising considering that none of us had slept since the trip to A&E.

We arrived on the ward at 6.15pm to find the curtains pulled around Dad’s bed. The penny finally dropped and when we pushed the curtains back Mum told us “he’s dying”

We don’t know if he knew we were there, he’d given Mum’s hand a squeeze but couldn’t talk. Dad died just after 9pm, he took my funny with him.