Peter - A death in poems
12/22/2010 10:11 p.m.
Peter, Dad, had been ill for many years. Following heart attacks and strokes he developed Parkinson's (later re-diagnosed as PSP). In some repects his death was one of a myriad of things he could no longer do. I remember the last time I took him to church, the last time I could truly understand his speech, I have the last birthday card he signed his name to.

Even so there was something indominatable about him, I could never conceive of him not being there. We all knew he was dying, he was doing so each time we visited him, but the reality never hit home.

He had been in hospital before, each time coming out a little weeker than before, a bit more immmobile.

His last spell started the same way, a urine infection, it spread to his lungs and there came a point, just before my first poem, where we told he was dying, it wasn't going to get better BUT there was no time frame. Active treatment was withdrawn but he was given oxygen and morphine. It took two weeks, almost the time span of the first four poems.

He kept going on, why we didn't know. The weekend before he died was the weekend when we had to cease the vigil, one of us was a teacher who had to return to school, my brother and I are self-employed and had to work. His longtime carer was exhausted and needed sleep. On the Sunday night (Hallowe'en) we left him alone intending to return the next day.

In the early hours of All Saints' Day he died. Maybe he had been waiting to die in peace.

Steve