It is surreal that you are gone, even three months after you left the world. It’s surreal that someone with such a passion and love for life is no longer here being an amazing father, brother, uncle, or doctor. Making people laugh even when they feel awful, making sure to include people at all times so no one feels left out, and singing constantly just because you want to.
I’ve had close friends and family die before, suffering from cancer or illness beyond any reason or logic, but still nothing in my life prepared me for those 6 weeks in hospital with you, my mum, and your sons. It was such a privilege to be there and I’m so glad I was, but now it’s hard to remember you without remembering the trauma we all went through. Somehow there were a lot of laughs in those weeks, because thank goodness your sons share yours and my dry, black sense of humour, because I can’t imagine any other way I would have made it through. I wouldn’t have gotten through this without them and I think that I provided some help to them as well as you.
Before you died, I spent 39 hours straight at the hospital with no sleep. I left for four hours and received a call from your eldest son at 4am to say you were gone and had to be the one to tell my mum. Your last full night on earth with me there overnight was not a good one, you were clearly suffering in such pain clutching your head at times and the seizures were relentless despite all the medication meant to keep you sedated. From 1-6am we were awake together and I could do nothing to help you but hold your hand and your head. The pain was a lot for you that night, worst that I’d seen. It’s one of only three times I really cried with you in those weeks in hospital, which is saying something because we all know how easily I cry. (Despite growing up with seven brothers and having four sons, you somehow always coped with my over-emotional state when I was younger especially.) You finally fell asleep sometime around 6:30am and I grabbed a pillow you weren’t using, put it over the bar at the edge of the bed while still holding your hand, and laid there until one of your brothers came into the hospital room at 9:30am.
A week before you died, we had a mini-celebration of you with my mum, three of your sons, their partners, and your closest brother. You were somehow managing to sing, it was the last we heard you really voice anything at all. It was a heartbreaking night, but so perfect that we could all see you singing one last time. I can’t hear those songs we all sang together even all these months later without getting emotional. Two and a half weeks before you died was the first time a doctor said there was any chance of you not coming back from this; until that point we all thought you would recover from this surgery and have 12 months left with us. It was so unexpected and soul-crushing to hear; three sons, my mum, and I went to a pub for drinks and all just cried together for the first time. There had been tears sporadically before then, but we thought this was just a temporary struggle and the doctors’ estimation of 12-14 months survival after diagnosis was still going to happen; instead you had less than three months.
No suffering and death of a loved one is fair, but the idea that you wouldn’t survive just a few more months to have one last Christmas with all your boys and stepkids together and to meet three grandchildren due to be born early February broke my heart because you adored the 5 grandkids you already had so much. The day after that night at the pub when we were facing what potentially was your last weeks and you had become more agitated and paranoid of hospital staff, and sometimes even us, I ventured into your room feeling so anxious you had moved beyond trusting me. Instead, you were in a very lucid mood that morning (so rare in those last weeks), and not only knew I was there, but remembered how much I had been there the previous few weeks. Telling me you appreciated how much I had done those few weeks for you, that you felt like a dad to me, and you loved me as much as you did your four sons. It was an emotional conversation and one I didn’t think I would be able to have with you after the news of the night before, so it was probably the most precious conversation of my life.
A week before you died, I spent about 5 hours that night with you while your sons and my mum met up with your 10 siblings and discussed how things were going at the hospital and it was time for them to come and visit you, which we had held off on thinking there was no reason for anyone to see the traumatic experiences in hospital because we all thought you’d be getting better soon and get out of hospital for at least a few months. It was the last somewhat lucid full conversations we had and it was a nice night where you weren’t feeling horrendous. The next day your siblings all came through and you became exhausted. I went in to check in on you after a few hours and you were very agitated and stressed. I tried all our normal methods by that point to calm you down, you said you wanted some sedative medication (which you didn’t always want unless you were feeling extremely agitated from the tumour and the seizure medications) so I asked the nurse to arrange this. Then in a fully lucid moment you looked at me and started crying in a way I hadn’t seen you cry before then and you said, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” and I said, “What do you mean? What do you have to be sorry for? Do you know who is with you right now?” and he said, “Of course I do, Linda, of course I do. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” I replied, “You don’t need to be sorry, this is so shit and unfair for you, I wish this wasn’t happening. You are safe here, everyone you love is here, the boys are just outside and everyone is here for you,” Then we were both crying and you started having a seizure, which continued off and on for another 6 hours before they got it under control and my mum, the boys, and I were all there. It was the first time it truly felt like the end.
You were a doctor for 40 years before you got sick, a general practitioner with a degree in anaesthetics as well. We received hundreds of cards, messages in the paper, and flowers from your patients who loved you too. Long before you were any kind of stepdad to me, you were my doctor in a way that I desperately needed when I was a teenager. Having specialists saying different things about my congenital medical issues, then developing epilepsy and vestibular migraines, I don’t know how I would have gotten through it all without your endless support. Before you were a father figure in my life, you were still one of my greatest supporters in my teen years when I really needed it. I wouldn’t have gotten through all that I did in my teen years without your care.
I was so lucky to know you for 22 years and had never imagined life without you. Even if you and my mum had not been together at some point, I know you would always have been in my life. In the days after you died, your second eldest son said to me a few times on different nights, “He loved you,” just in case I had any doubts whirring in my anxious brain (which of course I did). Coming from him, it meant a lot that he would say that and remind me. I loved you and wish you were here. I hope in time these devastating memories can be incorporated with the ones of you watching The Living End with me at Sandalford last January and all the other concerts we saw together, of your support when I sat crying in your office as a teenager, of you calling me Rock Kitten, of you spending hours making a Linda sign out of fairy lights for my 30th birthday, of you trekking 250km across deserts and other difficult terrain all over the world to raise money for charity, of how you raised four incredible sons, and provided such love to us all.
maybe in another life 
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