Peter Wilfred Vallance, my Uncle and second Dad,
passed away peacefully in his sleep at 3.30am in room 37, third floor of Queen
Charlotte Nursing Home with Barbara and Alison with him.
At 5am Barbara and Alison woke Craig and I to give
us the news.
We have all felt an overwhelming sense of relief
that this gentleman and gentle man, passed peacefully, without pain and with
his two champions with him.
The previous night of the 3rd I spent
five hours or so with him. It was clear that nothing would rouse him and his
pain was completely under control. Despite this, I spent most of the time
watching him breathe; but only once did he take a deep breath and that was as he
heard Barbara’s voice. He then settled back into a slow, deep, rhythm.
After getting home, I said to Craig that I hoped he
went when the girls were there because they had been with him, defending and
caring for him all the way from the first to the last. I could not imagine how
my Sister and Sister in Law would feel if they were not there to comfort him in
his last moments before the infinite.
The sense of relief is replaced very quickly with
guilt and then grief. But no matter how much this pains the living, the fact
that he passed without distress and with loved ones around him says it all and
will always be our comfort.
In the last year, our lives changed radically. From
his first illness, diagnosis and then the Home, we have learned more about his
illnesses, the care system and the inevitability of life and death than we ever wanted
to. I have always said we were “managing a slow-motion car-crash” and that is
what we have done; supporting the two drivers, Barbara and Alison with as much
energy and love and patience as we could.
I will miss my Uncle Peter. I will not miss the last
year of his life or the distress his dementia and cancer burdened him with and
which we tried to shoulder as a Family. It has taught me how strong we are as a
Family, how compassionate, how bloody minded and how tolerant and forgiving we
are. We have used muscles we never knew we had at our command. Those strengths
were given to us by the very Family around us during our whole lives.
