The other side
The phone call came on Friday: come now to say your last goodbyes to Rory, grandpa to the boys, father to my husband Corin.
We left the friends who'd just arrived for the weekend and drove.
Grandpa was non-responsive, labouring for breath. The nurses in the care home watched with serious eyes.
Rory's daughter flew in from Wellington; his nephew arrived from Auckland. We all took turns sitting beside him.
I picked up one of his favorites, Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas. I started reading to him, hoping he could still hear me. He answered with a single tear that rolled down his cheek.
Corin and his sister kept vigil overnight beside their father's bed and swapped stories until the early hours.
When daylight came the boys scampered through the corridors to check on Grandpa.
Any change? No change.
On the second day Grandma went out and bought coffees for everyone. Something to do.
The other care home residents kept an eye on us. The boys were fed treats by Vera every time she trundled past with her walker.
I sat in the wrong chair in the corridor and was confronted by Dawn. She looked about 90 and told me not to steal her stuff. I skedaddled.
Rory's sister was due to arrive on the bus from Gisborne but it never stopped to pick her up. We wondered if it was a sign.
Corin and I walked around the bridges at the north end of the city and passed people living normal lives, We tried not to stare.
On the third day old Jim up the hall in the wheelchair started looking really worried.
I finished reading Under Milk Wood to Rory and picked up a poetry anthology from his shelf, but the words were from another time.
By then he was on so much morphine the nurses started to say their own goodbyes. One cried, another prayed. Beautiful ladies from India, the Philippines, Ghana, Nigeria, all overflowing with kindness.
That evening Rory's sister arrived and an hour later his eyes suddenly flew open. Everyone was there. I reached for the poetry book and it flew open to a poem by Elizabeth Jenkins.
In the Night
Out of my window late at night I gape
And see the stars but do not watch them really,
And hear the train but do not listen clearly;
Inside my mind I turn about to keep
Myself awake, yet am not there entirely.
Something of me is out in the dark landscape
How much am I then what I think, how much what I feel?
How much the eye that seems to keep stars straight?
Do I control what I can contemplate
Or is it my vision that's amenable?
I turn in my mind, my mind a room whose wall
I can see the top of but never completely scale.
All that I love is, like the night, outside,
Good to be gazed at, looking as if it could
With a simple gesture be brought inside my head
Or in my heart, but my thoughts about it divide
Me from my object. Now deep in my bed
I turn and the world turns on the other side.
And then he was gone.
xx
Brydie