Friday, October 8, 2010

Crossing the bar


The last week has been incredibly hard.

Last week my Poppa was taken to hospital and we were told that he only had 24 hours to live. I woke up on Friday morning to an email from my Mum telling me this news and there commenced a frantic scramble to try to get a hold of family back home to see what the latest update was. Since then, it's been an emotionally exhausting existence, trying to work out if I could get back home and accepting the fact that I couldn't, calling the hospital every night and every morning to see how Poppa had gone over the last few hours - fearing before each call that I was about to hear news I didn't want to hear, and checking in with my Mum and my brother every day to make sure they were also ok, and so that they were I assured I was "ok" too. 

The first time I spoke to Poppa after he was hospitalised, he was barely there and couldn't speak. Our conversation wasn't helped by the fact that I was sobbing on the other end of the line, trying to tell him how much I loved him and that I hoped he wasn't in any pain. The next few days he was always asleep when I called.

The second time I spoke to Poppa, he was sounding much better. He was still weak, but was able to carry on a conversation with me, and we spoke about my travels, the postcard I had sent him from Mallorca, and his morphine-induced hallucinations of water flowing on the ceiling.

That was the last time I spoke with my Poppa.

I have received some lovely emails from friends offering support from afar, but one in particular gave me a quote to which I have been clinging... "Don't cry because it is over, smile because it happened." I'm not done crying yet, but it does warm my heart when I think that Poppa is now back with Nanna again, caught up in the whirlwind of their youth when they first met and were just starting to fall in love - Nanna beautiful and glowing with happiness, Poppa dashing in his navy uniform.

Today, as my Poppa is laid to rest back home, I cannot help but cry because his time in this world is over and my heart aches with missing him, but I do promise to raise a glass of Scotch for him, and I will smile because I knew him, and because the life of Harold Douglas Coleopy, my Poppa, happened.



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