A Lonely Death
On the morning of Sunday, September 4th 1966, I was chatting to Mam while she was doing the dinner about Dad and what was wrong with him. She announced that he had cancer. At some point she must have mentioned the possibility of his death and I retorted that ‘the Emmersons don’t die at such an early age’. Something like 14 hours later he was dead.
It is very very strange how you can live so close to somebody who is fatally ill and not know it. Christmas 1965 had been rather strange. There was a coldness about the place that had never been evident before: Dad was rather subdued – he wasn’t himself. Not long after, I think it was February, the doctor arrived to see Dad. This was something that had not occurred before. The outcome was that he went into hospital to have an operation. He’d been into hospital a few years earlier for an operation on his nose but this was different, he didn’t return to work. Dad always went to work, even when he had severe hay fever during late June. Even so, it didn’t occur to me that anything serious was wrong that could not be cured, and anyway, he was indestructible.
The operation seemed to work and although he had a series of post-operative visits to Middlesbrough General for radiotherapy, he returned for a while to his old ebullient self. Even so, I can’t understand why I didn’t put two and two together. Then one fateful evening he suffered an attack of pain in the side of his face and head, which subsequently was accompanied by the loss of tension in the muscles of his face. The doctor was called and diagnosed Bell’s palsy, possibly caused by a draft from the car window. Again I didn’t read the signs correctly.
More time went by. I can’t exactly recall when, but he spent some time recuperating at Grandma’s back home in Darlington to give Mam a break: I remember this because I visited him after my first day at work in the foundry. He subsequently went back into hospital for more treatment, this time at Sedgefield. The severity of the situation still did not dawn on me, even when so many of my aunties and uncles turned up for his birthday in hospital. He returned home, as I later realised, to die, supplied with plenty of Brompton’s cocktail.
The events of that final Sunday are dominated by two things: Mam’s terrible news about his illness and our last Sunday tea as a whole family. Now that I knew what the stakes were I could join the fight. At around 5 ‘o’ clock I went upstairs and encouraged him to come down for tea: we nearly always had tinned fruit and Carnation milk. He sat in his chair by the television as I helped him eat accompanied by It’s a Knockout, a programme that I became extremely aversive to, for a long time. On going back to bed, I had to support him up the stairs by having him put his arm around my shoulders. I was devastated by how light he was. I have never forgotten the experience; a man who had fired railway locomotives, flown war planes and policed the streets of Durham County had been wasted in 6 months and now weighed no more than a child.
I don’t remember anything of the evening. However, at around half past midnight Dad had asked for some tea in his white pint pot. Mam and I were at the bedside: David, Richard and Victoria were asleep. He struggled to drink. The next thing I remember was him trying desperately to tell us something, but he was so weak that the words he was attempting to vocalise were undecipherable. A short time later he gave up and lay on his left side, Mam soothing him, while I clung to his back in what I realised were his last moments of life. His body made sounds like a great ship coming to grief on rocks. It was not long before he took his final breaths and all was still.
Why did a man I loved and revered choose not to share the agony of his fatal illness and death and leave me, and my brothers and sister, so unprepared for the desolate times to come?
x
i also lost my father when he was only 44. i was 15 and still at school.
over a period of two years his alcholism overtook him and my mother made arrangements for him to leave our household. he ended up being given a small room in house only a few roads away from where we lived. i use to see him walk around in the street in his cap and puffer jacket, with a plastic carrier bag in one hand, which did little to hide a vodka bottle inside. he use to dispose of it before he got back to the house so we wouldnt know. but we knew, we could smell it and see him drunk. he tried to hide his habit.
mum said social workers had tried to help him but he kept drinking more once he left the house. mum thought it best that he leave becuase he use to insist on driving us to school whilst i knew would put us all in danger.
my father use to be a strong man. he always had lots of trophies from his football in his years. he always use to be fit, he even applied to join the royal marines in his youth but was refused due to a slipped disc he was born with in his spine, but he never seemed bothered by it.
my father was always active, fit, he drove us everywhere. he was a lot of fun, took me fishing, was my own football coach in our team. i admired the man i wanted to become when i was older.
he was my hero.
the day i heard him fall down the stairs and my mum told me to call an ambulance, he changed. he went to hospital and told us he had brain injury. the next time i saw him he was plugged in via numerous cables in a bed and had his hair shaved. they had implanted a small metal plate where a piece of his head was cracked when he fell.
soon he went home with us but he was never the same.
his eyes where drained of colour, dull grey all but remained of his once bright blue. his facial hair had become more white when he use to have deep brown. he seemed to have physically aged.
dad had been unemployed for a while now. since his accident.
it did something to him. but even before that. he was drinking.
but why…
soon after he left the house. a policeman knocked at the door when it was well past midnight. i was in bed at the time. but i heard her crying. i knew something truely bad had happened to add to the already difficuly feeling of having my drained, alcoholic father leave our house. he was dead. he had a stroke one evening outside in the street.
he shouldnt have died that way. not him. he was my father. he was my dad.
he was my role model, turned homeless alcoholic who died alone. what do i make of that?
where is the justice? what do i do with this pain which has solidified into my soul?
i still go on living. yet i will always feel this weight of losing my role model.
Dear Tim
Thank you for your heartfelt reply to my post. I will not reply immediately out of compassion and respect for your grief. If you would like to read my thoughts on your words please say. If I don’t hear from you – Best of Luck!
Peter
Thank you xx