In the late seventies, my divorced Mother took a night class in accounting. There she met a man that she liked, and she would often talk about him. One day, she invited him home to dinner and to meet her 4 children; he was very brave! My Grandad, who lived us by then following the death of his wife, had made a gooseberry pie for after dinner. The visitor stated he didn’t like gooseberries. He was persuaded to try a slice and ended up eating almost half the pie. After that, every time he said he didn’t like something one of us had made, we teased him about gooseberry pie. It turned out to be a great icebreaker and my Mother and he got married. That was a long time ago, and he turned out to be a great stepdad, and so much more of a Father figure than our biological father.

He had numerous health issues including strokes and heart attacks and even had a quadruple bypass. At one point he was given a few years to live, and that turned into over a decade. He went on to develop an abdominal embolism, over 14 months ago, and wasn’t given long to live.

As regular readers will know, my Mother has been in hospital for a while now and we think the stress of this has affected my stepdad’s health. I was visiting Mum on Friday, and had persuaded/strong-armed my sister to come, and my niece too. We’d only been there about an hour when we got a call that Dad had taken a ‘turn.’ We rushed to his house and he was quickly despatched to A&E. He’s been poorly before, and then sent home, so I went home. I’d only been home about 10 minutes when my sister called to advise that they determined his embolism had burst and that he was bleeding internally, and they didn’t expect him to last the night. I left home for the hospital, again, and we spent a very tense night with him. By 11pm I was exhausted so I went home and left my sister sitting with him. I rang at 4am on Saturday, he was still with us, so I quickly walked the dog, had a quick breakfast, and went back to hospital. I sat with him for 5 hours, went home for a few hours to see to the dog, then sat with him for 4 hours so my sister could take a break.

This isn’t an epitaph, just yet, as he’s still hanging on and fighting though in truth, this isn’t something you recover from. At 82 years old, it’s not something they can operate on either, so it really is just a matter of time. Mum is still there, on a different ward, and is becoming increasingly confused and quite belligerent. Dad is quiet and apologising for being any trouble. Neither of them has eaten or drunk anything in days; too weak and poorly, and both near the end I guess. Both have been visited by the palliative care nurses. All the staff have been wonderful. It’s been a long emotional week…