Taking up the challenge

Peter challenged me last night so here I am finally trying to start up this blog. Not sure where this will go but I would like to use this first entry to recap where I am and then plan how to fill in the gaps later.

I am very impressed with Peter's blog. He is very open about how he feels about things and this being such a public forum I have been a bit afraid to get started. The last few months have been emotionally very charged and it will be difficult to share my thoughts without sharing my feelings.

The world looked quite different one week ago. Thursday last week around this time I had all the plans in place for a busy Friday. We have been renovating our house at the same time getting it ready for Dad to join us when he finally left hospital. I had booked quite a number of tradesmen for Friday to commence the final touches of our restoration effort. Doors were to be put in. New blinds. And the final part of the roof restoration was to commence. I was also waiting to hear back from the window man to change the glass in our new bathroom window to frosted glass.

Dennis and I had just returned from visiting Dad in Hospital. Although his mind seemed to wander from time to time, Dad seemed exceptionally well - given his serious illness. It was easy to communicate with him. He was excited about things his doctor told him that day. He seemed to think they had finally found which bug was causing all his infections. They were also keen to start doing somefurther work with his lungs. The fluid was not pneumonia. They wanted to do a lumbar puncture (not that Dad knew the name at the time...I learned later on from the doctor what he had discussed with Dad) to extract fluid and to examine it. Dad was confident he was improving and so apparently was the Doctor. For the first time in ages. We left the hospital daring to hope again. I mentioned to Dennis that I would not be surprised if Dad surprised everyone and actually made it back on his feet again.

We spoke with Mum later that evening and she too was full of confidence from her visit during the day. She had not seen Dad that well for a long time. He was clear in his mind and they were able to have quite a long conversation. She shared with him details of her recent conversation with Renate in Germany. And this cheered him up. Renate's brother once was in a band with Dad and Mum found out that he was still meeting regularly with another member of the band.

I went to bed that night with the usual collection of phones next to my bed but less worried and slept quite well for a change.

And then at 6.13 am on Friday 8th July came that dreaded phone call. We had been expecting it all year only not on that day. At 6.10 am that morning the nurse doing her rounds found that Dad had passed away. Quietly in his sleep. Nobody could believe it. Not us nor the hospital staff. I got up and tried to collect myself before making that awful call to Mum. She heard the phone ring and in her half asleep state reached for it on the wrong side of her bed and then fell out of bed. I tried calling Gerd but his phone was turned off. I called Mum again. She knew what I had to say. Calling that early in the morning could only mean one thing. I guess we were hoping we would get a call saying that Dad had deteriorated. We would have rushed in to the hospital to sit with him and comfort him in his last moments on this earth. But it was not to be. He slipped away whilst we were all sleeping. The nurses had checked on him 15 minutes earlier and he was still ok.

We got dressed, picked up Mum and Gerd, called Helga, Peter, Susie, Robert and Michael and headed to the hospital.

The night before Dad had been shifted into a single room. This now proved to be a blessing. He lay there in bed looking as if he was sleeping peacefully. I touched his shoulders and they were quite warm. He felt soft and warm. He couldn't possibly be dead. But the nurse told us that the doctor had already been and he had been pronounced dead. We just couldn't believe it. We sat around his bed and talked. It seemed so natural. After seeing him so many times in terrible distress we almost felt relieved that he was so peaceful. I had to constantly remind myself that he was no longer with us. We must have spent nearly 2 hours in that room. The time went quickly whilst we waited for others to arrive. In time Peter came then Helga and David and Michael. Michael didn't realise that Dad was in the room when he came in. He thought we were in a meeting room. So it was quite a shock for him.

We asked the nurse to call the catholic chaplain. He came fairly quickly and said some prayers. I don't know if we were all numb or if it just seemed so right to be sitting there with Dad's body. I am so glad that we had that experience. It made his death seem less ugly. Not something to be terribly upset about. The finality of it all came much later.

Eventually Dennis took Mum to keep her doctor's appointment as she had not been well either and it seemed best she completed her medical tests.

We were then joined by the Registrar of the Ward - Dean. He had been treating Dad for quite a while now and was as shocked as we were. He was the doctor who had given Dad the good news the day before. And he himself, finally, began to be more optimistic about Dad's prognosis. We agreed with Dean that an autopsy was called for as there was a lack of clarity around what was actually wrong with Dad. Was he suffering from many unrelated illnesses or was the explanation that all of his symptoms were related and he was actually suffering from MSA (Shy Drager). Only an autopsy would give a definate answer.

We decided to head to the cafeteria for some breakfast and to allow the nursing staff to prepare Dad's body. We also needed to wait for the Pathologist to give us details of the autopsy.

The rest of that dreadful day is quite a blurr. I know we all eventually made it back home to our place. Somehow I cancelled all the tradesmen. Somehow we managed to find a funeral director. The agent came and discussed the details of what had to happen with us. The hospital informed us that the autopsy had been carried out and that Dad's body was in the Morgue ready for collection. Max informed us that Susie was booked on a plane out on Sunday morning. Robert was making enquiries about coming to Melbourne.

Throughout the day I sent email messages to people to let them know what had happened. In the evening we phoned our family members in Germany and also Harald Terhaag, Dad's dear friend. Later in the evening my brother Peter composed an announcement for the Saturday Age. And eventually we must have gone to bed!

That brings me to a fitting close for this first Blog entry. A lot of firsts. The first gathering at our newly renovated house was Dad's funeral - instead of his return home. I guess we were celebrating his return to his eternal home. The first entry in this blog is all about Dad's passing on to eternal life. And for us as a family this is the first member of our immediate family we have farewelled from this earth in Australia. It is a sad but also hopeful moment. We have lost on this earth the patriarch of our family. We now feel like a family beheaded. However we now have Dad as patriarch working hard for us to make ready a place for our eventual return to our heavenly home. So we live in hope of a reunion in that heavenly sphere where there will only be rejoicing.