Grief, hiding in the woodwork.

I'm normally a very calm person, I take pretty much everything in my stride, the really really good things, and the bad things. When my dad died just over six years ago, I dealt with it. He was very ill, he was in great pain, and he was completely miserable, uncomfortable, and it was his time to go. I knew all this. I still know it.

He died on Easter Saturday. On Good Friday, he was still at home, but was in pain, was vomiting, was extremely uncomfortable. Late that afternoon, my mom, Brett and I took him to the Linksfield Clinic, where we hoped that he would be able to find some relief. The staff there hooked him up to morphine and I don't know what else. By the time we left that evening, he was awake, reasonably alert, and not in so much pain.

When Brett and I found my mom there the next morning, she'd had a brief conversation with him, before he fell asleep. That was sleep that turned out to be unconsciousness, and he did not wake up again. The three of us sat with him in that room the whole day, knowing that we were watching him die. The nurses explained that his organs were shutting down, and that the cries he was making were morphine nightmares. Those stopped too.

By early evening, we were exhausted, and agreed to go home, get some clothes so that Brett and I could stay with my mom, and that we'd have some supper at home, and then go back to the hospital. As Brett and I pulled up into our driveway, my mom phoned to say that the hospital had called. My dad had died about 10 minutes after we had left. The nurse apparently said that it happens often, that terminal patients almost seem to 'wait' for their family to leave, so that death doesn't happen while they're there, so that they don't witness that flatline moment,  as happens in just about every hospital death scene produced by Hollywood.

I coped. I dealt with it. I'm still amazed that I could keep calm when the hospital called me to ask what to do with my dad's body. I didn't cry during the funeral, I just held onto my mom and Brett very very tightly. I dealt with it. And have done so for the last six years.

And then a sodding episode of Grey's Anatomy undid it all last night. We watched an episode called "Suicide doesn't hurt". I won't spoil it for those who haven't seen it, but it came crashing in (although it's been there all along, not causing any drama) that we left my dad to die alone. We didn't intend for that to happen, we had been sitting with him all day. But when it was his time to let go, time for his face to relax into the peace of being pain-free, we weren't there.

And it broke my heart, into a million tiny pieces, six years later.

I still miss him, every day. I wish that he had the opportunity to know my gorgeous boys. I know that there is no way that I would wish him back, if he had to carry on suffering the way he was. But I really wish that we had just stayed there for a little longer, to witness his freedom from pain.