Grief is a universal thing and at some point, everyone experiences it. The experts say there are seven stages of grief – shock, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance, and processing grief – but for everyone, it is a personal experience and there is no textbook that can tell you how to grieve or give you a timeline or schedule to follow. Some people are able to easily deal with it, others may go off the deep end and have to seek professional help. Some may grieve for a month or two, others may take years to get used to their loss.
On the afternoon of June 13, when I sat next to my stepfather, took his frail hand in mine and told him it was okay for him to “go,” and that we, his family, would be okay, in hindsight I don’t think I was truly prepared for the impact of what happened next. At 71, he had been confined to a bed and hooked up to an oxygen concentrator machine for over eight months, unable to do anything for himself. He had always been active and had a healthy appetite, so seeing him lying helpless only nibbling on two bites of whatever he felt like eating on any given day was heartbreaking. He was not big in stature, and I never imagined he could have gotten any smaller, but he just kept shrinking until he was mere skin and bones with swollen, painful knees. Throughout it all, though, he was very vocal, and his mental faculties were in tip top shape.
So when my sister called that fateful morning, panic in her voice, informing me that he wasn’t responding to anything, I knew the inevitable had come. Yet, I wasn’t prepared for what awaited me when I entered his room. His eyes, with what looked like a sheer veil pulled over them, were darting in any direction in which he heard a voice. His mouth was open and he was gasping for breath, his bony chest heaving labouriously with every attempt. He couldn’t speak.
Taking him to the hospital was out of the question, because after he had been discharged from the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex in Mt Hope in October 2021, he was adamant that we never take him to a hospital again. “I want to die in my own bed,” he had always insisted. And we didn’t force the issue because long before his last stay at the hospital his doctor had told us there was nothing else to be done for him medically, and to just make him comfortable at home. He was at stage 4 chronic obstructive pulmonary disease – the final stage which most people reach after years of living with the disease and the lung damage it causes.
“Hey,” I said softly after hours of watching the man I had known as my father since I was two years old struggling to hold on to life. His eyes shot in my direction. “If you’re ready to go, it’s okay. We’ll be fine. I’ll make sure Norma (my mother), Devon (my brother), and Tyler, Justin and Nicholas (my nephews) are okay,” the ones he always worried about. “Thank you for being a good husband, father and grandfather. We love you and will miss you, but we understand that you’re in pain. You go and rest in peace. Are you ready to go?” He gave a slight nod
