Living with Dying - Last Things
Living with Dying - Last Things
As I begin to write the “how I got here” story, which will be done over many different posts, I often come back to the concept of “last things”. As we move through our lives, we so often mark the “first things” milestones - first steps, first tooth, first kiss… they become part of the fabric of how we remember our time in this life, and we hope that throughout our life we can still get to experience a “first thing”, because they have a special energy about them that will never be repeated no matter how many times we do that thing again.
For me, the loss of my husband, Kevin, turned my thoughts to “last things”. This photo is the last photo I have of us - in fact it’s probably the last photo taken of Kevin before he died. It was taken on our wedding anniversary… there’s a funny story behind it too but that’s for another day. Another memory to add to the “last things” basket.
Kevin’s diagnosis was accidental. He had completed the Malaga half-Marathon in December 2019, and hadn’t felt well a couple of days later. Still in Spain he took himself to hospital and got scanned and was told to come home and see a doctor immediately.
A barrage of tests and a week in hospital later, and by the 9th of January 2020, we had the news, and it was as Kevin said to me, “the worst possible news I could have thought of” - Stage 4 Bowel Cancer. The prognosis was 2-3 years. I remember thinking at the time, “well at least that’s not a few weeks, but I have a feeling it won’t be that long”. The next few days were a blur of research and visits and decisions around treatment. We had so many conversations about the future, and a long list of “what-ifs”. Kevin wondered if he would ever be able to go running again (he didn’t in the end, so Malaga became that “last thing”), and if he would go back to tour guiding and driving (that didn’t happen either). We reminisced about the past too, and new stories emerged that I hadn’t heard before, and added another layer to an amazing human. We made plans to visit friends, to break the news to them - Kevin was insistent that beyond the initial small circle of people, everyone needed to be told in person, and that we had time.
They say that there’s never enough time, and in a way that’s true. No matter how much time you have, you are never prepared - and you would always give anything to have more time with a loved one. That is the powerful energy of love - it draws you to other people, and it’s hard to prepare for a day when you still have that love, but they have done their “last thing”. Someone described grief, as “love with nowhere to go”, and that sums it up perfectly for me.
In the early hours of the 11th of February, Kevin was rushed back to hospital, feeling unwell after chemotherapy. By that afternoon it was clear that the plan hadn’t gone to plan at all, and 2-3 years was looking more like weeks or months. New options were drawn up, but Kevin being Kevin had other ideas. With the peaceful acceptance that he kept throughout, he knew there was only one more “last thing” to do, and a few hours later, with myself, his sister Catherine and brother John by his side, he took his very last breath.
I don’t remember a huge amount about the subsequent days (more on that in another post), but in the weeks and months that followed, my grief became about last things. The last time we spoke before unconsciousness took over, his last joke, the last text he had sent me. As the initial fog cleared, more “last things” memories surfaced, and they still do, 2 years later. They become more of the focus during loss than the first things - perhaps it is because there will never be any more first things?
In a magical way, Kevin’s ultimate last thing became a first thing for me - the first time I walked the liminal space between life and death, the first time I witnessed a soul transition, and ultimately the catalyst that set me on my path to celebrancy and doula work.
In the same way as life and death are two sides of the same coin, so first and last can be also. In as much as we can’t live our lives with the fear that every experience could be the “last thing”, I have learned to keep the thought consciously with me. My connections with others, and how I walk this path have become more meaningful because on some level, I understand and accept that any moment could be someone’s “very last thing”. And some day it will be mine.