Angel Colours

That two year anniversary has just passed, and I got through it. No tears the entire day except during a phone call from a friend I did not expect; I was appalled at how near to the surface these tears were. I did not know that. But I was well supported - lunch out, dinner out, cheerful company skating me through.

Those last few days of F's life I was persuaded to visit my son B in London, to have a break, they said. F seemed to be improving. The weekend was arranged, and B had gone to some trouble planning meals and activities for us. I packed a bag and went to the hospital prior to flying to London about midday.

F was sitting up, looking very much better. Why are you crying? he said. Because I don't want to go! I wouldn't have it any other way, he said, you need to go. You need to get back to reality. This is my reality, I said, and those were our last words.

I left his ward and was pursued by a male French Canadian nurse. Are you alright? he said. No. You are exhausted, you have been through a terrible time; it will do you good. I stood looking through that first floor window at the interminable scene I had studied so many times - a large car park, people coming and going, asphalt and trees. I felt defeated.

Son M was there, he would stay with his father. He put me on the plane and I cried the entire way to London. A young man sat next to me - he must have been mortified. I stared out the window for that hour or so during the flight, tears running down my face. But when I saw son B, they stopped as if a tap had been turned off, and I settled into the fast pace that B walks as we made our way by train through the massive English crowds, cold stations, on and off two trains to his home in Blackheath.

I felt cossetted, cheerful. The next day I had my hair done indifferently and we lunched at a Press Club bar somewhere near Fleet Street. All was well. But that afternoon M phoned to say that his father had a temperature.

I should have listened to that warning bell. I should have heard it! But one clings so to hope; brush this aside, he is, he must be, on the road to recovery. Instead, we carried on with our day, our plans, our meals. I cannot clearly remember what we did that Saturday evening - watched English television, I think, after eating out. I had been starved of television of late. But Sunday morning dawned freezing cold, and M was worried. Still, there were no planes on that particular airline on a Sunday to that French town; and I would be flying back on Monday morning.

We took B's dog Jamie for a walk in Greenwich Park before our Sunday lunch. It was absolutely freezing. I walked with pain, I was frozen rigid with dread. We walked a long way, until poor Jamie's bad hip troubled him and B picked him up and carried him. Jamie's embarrassed little face.

B had prepared a roast lunch. He served it and I could see the trouble he had gone to. I ate as if it were sawdust. He had to attend a business dinner that evening. I can't leave you like this, Mom, he said. I will go there, explain things, and come straight home. Which he did. Somehow, that night passed.

In the morning I was dressing to leave when the phone rang. Son M: Dad is very bad. Yet another infection. The doctors say should they do everything or should they do nothing? By everything they meant rush him into surgery. Do nothing, I said. He has had enough.

They expected him to survive for 48 hours, they would make him comfortable. I knew with absolute certainty that F would not want more surgery, ventilation, intensive care, catastrophe's worked upon his defenceless body.

B would fly with me to France, cancelled everything. We got on the train taking us to some small airfield outside London. I cannot now remember its name. On board I took knitting needles I had in some knitting and put them in the litter bin as I could not board the plane with them in my luggage, and I did not want to have to put luggage in the hold; it was only a small case, I could carry it on and quickly off.

The train wound through fields and small suburbs. As it rounded a bend we ran in between some rolling green hills, which changed as if a light had been turned on to the most vivid colours imaginable; I was aware of the colour as if they had been brushed by angel wings. Colour poured onto the scene, filled the entire sky; colour which couldn't be there in that grey English landscape. I saw a rainbow prism beaming into and through every blade of grass, every nuance of the hill.

I know now that was the moment F died.

M was with him. The French Canadian nurse had closed the curtains around father and son, and quietly switched off the blinking graphs surrounding his bedside. I cannot write about those last moments. It was a moment of deep communication between them, and although it breaks me that I was not there, I would not deny my beloved F and his son that devastating closeness.