Helicopter

He had always been such a “big” man. Big “boned” my mum used to say of us too when others said we were chubby or my teacher started calling me “slim”.

My dad was big-hearted big on kindness and sensitive, and definitely big on appetite. He was strong as an ox and well into his 70s thought nothing of re-pointing the house on staging or relaying the patio.

To see a mere caricature of the man I had grown up with and because of was the saddest sight of all.

We had been called in as the staff nurse said she thought “it was his time”. This was no swansong. Dad’s time was years earlier when he was still fit and had a thirst for laughs and work and beer in equal measures. That man had gone some time before and we had this immobile body lying peacefully for once free of all the blessed connections and pipes and cables.

I could not take my eyes from the wide putty coloured eyes which could see no longer and would never see again. Or his bruised and shiny arms which had done such labours but recently wore the signs of warfarin and an onslaught of blood tests. Or from his mouth stretched unnaturally to elicit every last cubic centilitre of oxygen it could take in. 

My mum was looking out over the rooftops talking about the air ambulance which seemed to be nearby. And how Dad had never seen it take off or land in his time in hospital. More’s the pity. He loved aircraft.

His laboured breathing paused for a moment and a slight almost imperceptible gasp escaped his mouth. And he was gone. He left the world much as he found it with no pretensions or handouts and without drama.

I felt his hand and neck and though not a man of medicine I knew that his pulse had now gone forever and a cool clammy feel came to him within only a few seconds.

As the sound of the rotor blades continued to intensify Mum gestured towards the helicopter landing and just maybe (as hearing is the last sense to go) my Dad heard the helicopter coming in just before he left us. He would’ve liked that.