Well that is the end of the journey for me..my lovely husband passed away in Fremantle hospital on May 1st.2012.
He is at peace at last and out of that dreadful pain,it has been very hard going when we arrived here in Perth, I seem to know Armadale and Fremantle hospital like the back of my hand. He just got progressively weaker and sicker and I finally called an ambulance to take him to hospital when he was no longer feeling like eating and could no longer stand.
They (Fremantle Hospital) tried putting a stent down into the oesphageaus to help him swallow, but it was unsucessful and kept moving around.After 14 days in hospital he was losing weight rapidly , on the day before his death I had spent the whole day at the hospital, cutting his nails, shaving him, bathing him etc. so deep down I suspect I knew that something was happening, the next day I decided for some unexplained reason to catch a train to the hospital and not drive, thank goodness I did as I don't think I could have driven home to our sons place again.
I was about three stations from Fremantle when the hospital rang and said he was becoming unresponsive, I said I would be there shortly and prayed he would hold on, I immediately rang our son at work and told him and he said he was on the way.I ran like a mad woman through the street from the station and got to his room, I told him I was there and he squeezed my hand, I begged him to hold on till our son got there and I rang my daughter in Sydney and told her to say goodbye to her Dad, she was really distraught as she and the three grandkids were arriving in a couple of days to see her Dad and Pop. Our son arrived soon after and we both held either hand, the staff could not have been nicer and did all they could to ease his suffering, I finally said to him it was time to go and ease his pain, finally after a few more minutes he passed away.
To this day 2 weeks later it is all very surreal, even though we have had the funeral and a lovely little memorial service where the grandkids wrote notes and threw flowers in the ocean I still cannot believe it is finished, I keep thinking "Oh I must get Les to fix that or Oh I must let Les know that" we were one month short of our 40th wedding anniversary and I have lost my best friend.
The main hurtful part has been the lack of any communication with his family, a family I never thought I had any problem with, when my son rang Les's only sister, her reaction was "I can't afford to fly to Perth"..no one was asking them to fly anywhere, but we did not even have a chance to say when I return to the East coast maybe we could have a small memorial there. Well as far as I am concerned their brother and Uncle would have been devastated at their lack of compassion for myself and his children, however that is their problem not ours.
I now have the unenviable task of towing the caravan and car back to the East coast, I am leaving in a week or two and that way I can be closer to my daughter and grand children, and then may be able to map out my own future. He was only 66 years young and we had so much to do and see it is just not right.
