Final Sigh

We sat around his bed chatting, sometimes giggling, in hushed tones. Nana and Mum held his hand and stroked his warm, weathered arm, shiny eyed and smiling. Although the outside ward was dark, his room was still bright. And the woman next door had stopped wailing every three minutes. The night began to feel somewhat peaceful.

Music played quietly from a small white radio. So quietly you had to strain to hear it over the hiss of his oxygen mask. In between chatting our eyes would rest on him, lying under his white sheet, his chest a cage of bones rising and falling slowly. His broken arm was in a white hospital sling, hiding the black colour of the bruised flesh. His other warm hand, held by Nana was bruised too, from the canular that kept being replaced each time he had pulled out. The same hand with a crooked finger, bent at the first knuckle after an operation. He was the only person we know who could point around a corner. A thin, worn body lay beneath the sheets. The frailty of it betraying the strength of character and the arcane sense of humour that was as strong as ever. 

If he heard anything he would have heard us talking about him, and his many Good Jokes. We giggled over Mum's recollection of his delight when Araldite was created. And how he glued two shillings to the footpath across from his office to watch people bend down to try and pick it up, unaware. One individual returned with a tool of some sort and chiseled it off the footpath. All his stories that he could no longer tell himself. That's what he would have heard.

We noticed that his breaths were becoming further apart, still shallow. Five pairs of eyes hesitantly watched the bones of his chest rise and fall and wait. And rise and fall and wait. Until it fell and was still. He let out one final sigh and a single tear rolled down his face. 

Nana held his pulse, feeling his heart beating on, but weakening slowly. I fought off irrational panic, of why nurses weren't rushing in to perform CPR. When the young doctor came in and pronounce time of death Nana and Mum realised it was over and bent forward to him in grief. We held that warm hand and kissed his warm face and told him how we loved him. Beautiful in life and in death.

As we left the room, red eyed, hearts empty, my beautiful Nana cast her eyes over to her partner of 66 years, smiled fondly and whispered "goodbye Darling".

Charles John Parkes

John, Dad, Grandad and Big Grandad