Dropping like flies

Turning the corner makes no difference if there is always another corner to turn up ahead.

It is a weird thing to be checking your emails to see if someone has dropped dead yet. I guess it's the current version of hovering over the phone (and I don't do phones!)

An, occasionally, wise person once told me that you never get over it, you get used to it: how could any one be expected to "get over" watching someone that you would give one, both arms, to save slowly waste away before you.

The false alarms: you are told to expect the end to come in the next few days only to find her up and about the following morning polishing!

The inability to climb the stairs and eventual confinement to bed: serene initially and then the hell of trying to drag a dead weight onto the portable toilet as the nurses aren't due for another few hours.

The call out for the Locum in the early hours:just quell the cries for it all to end with morphine please!

The ridiculous things you find yourself doing: err...painting the whole house, removing and buying four new bedroom doors and trying to get them fixed in place "before it's too late" (what on earth was that about?!)

The irritation caused by citric acid: the discovery that it is in everything. You've never read that many labels or spent so long in the soft drink aisle before!

The weird things non-family members do that you feel powerless to stop: painting the nails of someone who has never painted their nails and only has long nails as she is confined to bed! Turning up and asking to pray with the sick as "I had a dream about her last night and God asked me to visit." And I asked Jesus for strength!

The constant and strange requests: where the hell am I going to find that flavour ice-cream at this time of day? The frantic search for the ice-cream: anything, if only you'll start eating again and I can kid myself that you can somehow get well.

You wishing that it'll all end then feeling guilty as hell as you know that you want your own suffering to stop as much as hers.

The non-comedy comedy moments: your father talking to the cat as her breathing finally ended; her getting stuck on a tight corner on the way out on the stretcher; the outrageous death pose impression done by your younger brother:one that you almost did yourself, but thought that would make you a very sick person!

The silence after the event: how you now miss that once irritating stream of visitors and nurses.

The friends who never called: you figure out they were never really friends.

Some people's weird idea of sympathy: "I had a dog that died once."

The family squabbles: everyone deals with it in their own way but is incapable of looking outside of their own grief.

Being told how wonderful the dead person was: is that supposed to make the loss more bearable?

The weird things those in the trade say: "How pretty she is?" How can a corpse be pretty, exactly? (Necrophilia notwithstanding!)

You can't turn the corner as there has been a stream of them and it's almost one more down, two more to go.

People say how it seems like a long time ago now. Not to me. It will always be closer than yesterday.