Hospitals are lovely places to visit but you wouldn’t want to live there. Or die there.
Jack was thinking this as he watched his family crying and hugging his lifeless body. He’d
wanted to die at home where his wife of sixty years, Phyllis, had died.
The asthma demon that had robbed her of her right to breathe since birth had finally come
to claim her one winter’s evening as she dozed on the couch by the fire. She’d spent her
life battling him and now he’d won the war.
Jack had woken at his usual gardening hour of six o’clock to find her body cold and lifeless
and a Reader’s Digest lying on her chest.
“Oh my love, my love, my sweet darling Phyll,” he cried as he stroked her wiry grey hair. “I
don’t want to live without you. I can’t.”
“Don’t be silly you old fool!”
Phyll’s voice came from behind him and scared him half to death. She was standing by the
mantelpiece, illuminated, peaceful, beautiful. He tried to touch her but she was a
gossamer-like apparition. Her voice, however, was as strong and tangible as ever.
“Now listen here Jack, when your time comes I’ll be waiting for you. I’m not going
anywhere without you. But you’ve got plenty to live for. You have four sons, fourteen
grandchildren and five great grandchildren who love you.”
“But who will cook my dinner?” he asked, in all seriousness.
“You’ll just have to learn to blinkin’ well do it for yourself you silly old goat.”
“At the age of bloody eight-two? You must be mad woman!”
“No, just dead. I’m hanging up my apron love.” And with that she vanished.
Jack shivered and felt alone. Deserted. I’ve shared three-quarters of my life with Phyll, he
thought. The world isn’t real without her in it.
He decided he would give himself three months to say his farewells to the family, and have
a few final rounds of golf with Bob Rickard, his neighbour of thirty years. Then he’d simply
shower and shave, hang his best suit up and will himself to die in his marital bed.
He knew he should call the family, but he wanted time alone with her. He carried her frail
body back to bed, their place of togetherness and solace from the world. The sheets still
smelled of her. He wondered how long a person’s scent could linger after they died. Why
didn’t their smell die with them? It was as if the part of her that had first attracted him was
lingering to comfort him in his desolate grief.
He remembered the first time they had made love on their wedding night. She had
watched his reaction carefully as she undressed for him. Her gaze did not leave him. She
had a look that told him she hoped her body would please him, but there was also
defiance in her eyes, just daring him to say the wrong thing.
She stood before him and slowly slipped off her crimson silk nightdress, a wedding gift
from her mother. There before Jack stood the most beautiful, curvaceous female form he’d
ever seen, and it was completely, horrifically, covered in burns. From her neck to her
painted red toenails, her skin was shrivelled and scarred. She had never told him about it
and she wasn’t going to start now.
As the years drew on she shared with him her story of having been thrown into a bathtub
of boiling water by her alcoholic father. She’d been lucky to survive. It was something she
didn’t talk about. Phyll was a woman who preferred to get on with life. Jack loved that
about her. And she never said a bad word about anyone, even her father. For that he
admired her more than anything.
But tonight, he asked no questions. He took her hand like it was a delicate butterfly wing
and pulled her to him. He tenderly, lovingly, kissed and caressed every inch of her
divineness. He was not repulsed by the scars. He was just grateful she was alive and had
agreed to marry him. Funny, he had become so used to her scars that he’d forgotten all
about them until now.
Only once had he given in to the temptation of another woman. Phyll’s buxom sister
Peggy. They had both regretted it and agreed to keep it to themselves. Jack felt a wave of
guilt wash over him.
“I’m sorry about Peggy my love,” said Jack, as he held her tight and drank in her scent.
“I’m sorry I was too much of a coward to tell you the truth.”
Phyll’s distinctive laugh rang out from the foot of the bed. “I knew all along you silly old
goat.” Her voice materialised before her gossamer body.
Jack jumped up in complete shock, not because his dead wife had returned again, but
because she knew the dirty secret he had kept from her for years. He was lost for words.
“Don’t you think I wondered why you suddenly started bringing me flowers in from the
garden every day when that had stopped years before? I knew something was rotten in
Denmark and it wasn’t hard to figure Peggy out. We both know her assets were always on
her chest, not in her head.”
“But why didn’t you ever tell me you knew?” he asked.
“What was the point? I could see you were sorry. Also, it dawned on me that after ten
years of marriage you’d stopped giving me flowers and I hadn’t even noticed. I was too
busy with the kids. In a strange way Peggy helped save our marriage because I decided
from then on to make you my priority. You were the love of my life. And you weren’t a bad
husband either.”
Jack couldn’t contain his emotion. He sobbed and shook with heartache and regret,
putting such a strain on his old ticker that it finally gave in.
He knew what a cardiac arrest felt like; he’d had two before. He clutched his chest and
reached for the old black telephone on the bedside table. His eldest son John answered.
“John, tell the family I love them all,” he said in a pained voice. “Mum’s gone and I’m not
far behind.”
He passed out and woke up in the hospital bed he was now staring at. Most of the family
were crammed into the small room that overlooked the hospital garden: his four sons with
their lovely wives, and some of their children and their children’s children. It was a fine
brood he thought, as he closed his eyes for the final time. It wasn’t his idea of how he
wanted to go, but at least he had been able to say goodbye. That was more than Phyll had
got, the stoic woman who had held the family together through all the ups and downs that
families endure.
“We had a good life,” said Phyll, as she took his hand in hers. “We saw war and poverty,
experienced great pain and incredible joy. And we stuck together through it all. How
blessed we were.”
“Shall we go my love?” he asked her, kissing her gently on the forehead.
“Yes my darling, but first I need to do this…” With that she kicked him so hard in the balls
he would have had another heart attack had he still been alive.
“I owed you that,” she said.
He figured he’d had it coming.
They took one last look at the hospital room full of the shining fruits of their lifelong love
and drifted away into the crisp, winter air.