The Phone Call in the Night

10th January 2012 Tuesday

I’ve been half expecting it - the phone call in the night. But it comes from my sister at lunchtime when I’m clearing away my soup bowl. The doctor just called her - our father has had another stroke.

We sit on either side of his bed. He’s propped up on lots of pillows, all skew whiff - his head lolling to the right, his mouth a gaping black cave, his eyes closed. His hands are very hot. We open the windows. Every now and again one of us squeezes a drop of water onto his tongue from a small pink sponge on a stick. He coughs and swallows and opens his eyes a little.

I lean close and say “Hello, Pa.” He looks at me and I think he tries to smile but his lips won’t move properly. They are very dry and chapped. He closes his eyes again. My sister and I eat a few of his Elizabeth Shaw Mint Chocolates that someone gave him for Christmas and talk across the bed and hold his hand and stroke his bumpy head and watch him breathing and sleeping - his right hand clutching and grasping the air as if it was a cup.

And I remember how it was with my mother on the night she died.

Much later they call the district nurse to check his catheter and my sister and I drive home to our husbands. And then start making the phone calls.

I keep wondering if I should go back and sit with him through the night. Will I regret it if I don't? When I call the home they say he is the same but I can come in if I want to at any time. I make a mug of cocoa and remember how much he used to like hot chocolate. I realise he won’t taste it again. Probably. Because you can never know when the last time is the last time.

The phone call may come in the night but I will see my father tomorrow.