OUT OF TIME

When the phone rang we were in bed. Instinctively I knew that it would be bad news. Seldom, if ever do people phone at five to midnight with good news. It was my sister. In a charged and very controlled voice she gave me the news I was half expecting but had not really wanted to hear. My father had died in hospital a little over five minutes earlier.
If you were to ask how I felt at that moment I would have to say stunned. Words, a Northern Irish friend had often spoken in jest came to me in a nonsensical way. “ Do you know” he would say in his Irish accent
“That there are people dying today that have never died before”. Words that appeared humorous at that time now seemed shallow.
About a year earlier hospital staff had found a malignant growth behind dads left ear. They had given him the choice, which was no real choice in dad’s view, of having radiation treatment to the ear. They would first have to make him a facemask. He didn’t think much of that idea because he often suffered anxiety attacks and considered himself claustrophobic. He was told that success could not be guaranteed and that the inside of his mouth would probably become very dry and extremely sore. He didn’t think much of that idea either. If he was going to die he was going to go with some dignity and in reasonable comfort. Fate didn’t think much of that idea and ensured that his passing would be in maximum discomfort. His bedsores would make sure of that.
It was true that he was to be eighty-eight years young at the time of his death. But what did that matter? Age wasn’t the issue. In a thousand years time he would be one thousand and eighty –eight and that wouldn’t matter either.
It was true that he hadn’t died a violent death. A road accident had not claimed him. Neither had a plane crash. Nor had the sea. He hadn’t died in some foreign field and had lived long enough to see at least one of his grand children marry. Yet still the person responsible for my very existence was no more. Except that is, in the minds of those that had been left behind. And as long as we are alive, he will be alive also. That’s what I told a younger brother anyway.