by Patricia Hughes

Created on: May 23, 2008   Last Updated: October 31, 2008

I was fast asleep in the middle of the night. In the dark room I was suddenly dragged out of my sleep by a loud rumble from the stairs beside my bedroom door. I can hear it now, like the fast, angular tumble of a heavy object in a dry washing machine. Except it started at the top of the stairs and was the size of a human being. And then it stopped.

By the time I got out of bed and through the door nothing was moving. There was just a shape at the bottom of the stairs. In the light of the stairwell I could see my husband, almost curled in a foetus position, still and quiet.

Somehow, as if floating, I reached him and saw there was no blood. He did not look as if he had broken bones. A breath of air, like a ghost emerging, issued from his lips. I wanted to help him up, but he made no move. I yearned to lift him, hold him, rock him, soothe him, but I dared not move him at all. In case; just in case. To busy myself, to find someone to help, I phoned the emergency ambulance.

Fifiteen long minutes later the paramedic, having missed the gate, waded through aggressively thorny rose bushes to the back door, since the front door was blocked by my husband. As she came in and switched off her torch, I pointed to him and said, "I think he's dead". Matter-of-factly she replied, "I should think he is," and it was difficult for me to explain at that point why I felt her tone was so shocking. "He will get colder," she said.

I watched her take out her equipment and put the pads on his skin, turn on the monitor, check his pulse. I kept looking all the time, afraid I would miss the small trace of a heartbeat. But it never came. And now I saw under his head a tiny pool of dark red that caused my eyes to smart and fill, so that I gasped, pointing with my finger. But she had seen it before. And as I looked again I caught sight of the monitor showing a single straight white line.

I could not stop stroking his cheek and whispering to him that it was alright now, no pain would hurt him, there was nothing to fear now. I cried the heavy, rhythmic sobs of the cheated, hurt, deserted mourner for whom there is no consolation, now or forever. After a while I sat on a nearby seat and my mind was a perfect blank.

Now I had understood that he was gone, I wanted to smoke one of his cigarettes, to share something, however meaningless, with the person I knew him to be. I remembered then that I did not know what time it was, or what time he died. I did not know how much time had elapsed. The paramedic -her name was Mary - said she had arrived at 3.15, and the journey took about 15 minutes; he had fallen down the stairs at about 3 am. He had died at about 3 am.

She stood beside his body, looking at him reflectively. "Did he have any medical condition?" she asked. I wanted to answer "No", to say he had never complained, he was always ready to fix the car, build shelves, go shopping or mow the lawn, ready to listen to my problems, to buy presents and cards, encourage the children, laugh over the day. Because all of it was true. In contrast I answered "Yes" and explained that he had been diagnosed less than three weeks before as suffering from terminal pancreatic cancer, Because that was also true. Mary nodded wisely, as if it had all become clear. "Who can I call for you?" she asked gently.

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