When death comes knocking: A patient’s last wish

The ringing phone startled me. I was so focused on my report I had lost track of time. It was way past time for me to still be on my desk.

The last patient of the day was long gone, even the office staff had bid me farewell hours before. I was surprised to see the name on the screen. It was Marrah* and I hadn’t spoken to her in a year or so. She sounded broken.

Marrah* was a bubbly, happy-go-lucky mother of five, blessed with a set of twins, and then triplets, all boys. We met her through a mutual friend and she cracked me up over coffee. She made fun of her extreme fertility and despite having undergone a tubal ligation, she didn’t trust her ovaries not to pull a fast one on her.

She was married to her exact opposite. Jonah* was a quiet and laid-back businessman who adored his wife. We joked that Marrah talked enough for both of them. He was also a very proud father of their boy battalion, dedicated to his family to a fault.

It was unlike Marrah to be so distraught. My antenna was up and the laptop slammed shut as I gathered my stuff to head home. By the time I locked the office, Marrah was sobbing on the other end.

She shot straight- her husband was dying. He had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. They had been to India for treatment and back as there was nothing more that could be done for him.

Her children were all away at boarding school all week, coming home on the weekends. She could not fathom sleeping alone in the big empty house while he lay in a hospital bed. She set up a room for Jonah in the house and hired nurses to care for him 24 hours a day. She sounded exhausted, both physically and mentally.

A phone conversation wouldn’t do. We agreed to meet up the next morning for breakfast. She needed to ventilate. I almost did not recognise her. Marrah had lost a lot of weight! Her sparkle was all but gone.

She told me the story of their fight against a losing battle. The onset of symptoms that seemed too rapid, the diagnosis by the gastroenterologist who saw him, the immediate flight to India to seek treatment and the devastation that the cancer was already in stage four, with no hope of cure.

He was put on a chemotherapy regiment to slow down the progress and improve his quality of life but it would not stop this train that long left the station.

He was on a truckload of medications to relieve pain and manage his symptoms. Essentially, he was to be kept comfortable until it his moment to bow out.

Marrah was struggling to process this. She was not ready to lose her life partner. She had known her husband for over 30 years, married to him for 20 of those. She felt so alone and miserable. Perhaps it is why she sought me out.

As a doctor, I would perhaps understand her struggle. She knew she was clutching at straws, looking at options of enrolling him in clinical trials for novel cancer treatments, because it made her feel like she was doing something.

I had no way of relieving Marrah’s burden, but the one thing I did remember was the fond look on Jonah’s face when he came to pick her up from our coffee date when I first met her. It was pure adoration as he watched her talk her heart out. I had an idea.

Marrah loves fine dining. She is an absolute teetotaler, hence does not club much, but Marrah knows everything about restaurants and fine dining in the city. I often teased her that it was time to start her own restaurant review column. She had dragged her husband to every possible restaurant across the city. It was their favourite past time.

I asked Marrah to take a moment, step back, and think about what her husband would want to do with her one more time before he left this earth. I wasn’t wrong, he would most likely love to take her to dinner, a black-tie event, complete with candles.

And that is how the idea of bedside dinner was born. Every Friday evening, Marrah would dress up and do the same for her husband. She would order in food from one of their favourite restaurants and light up the candles. She would feed him little bites of what he could take off the plate, while the rest was blended for him. She would talk to him for hours.

Marrah called me one Saturday morning about six weeks later. Her husband was no more. He had passed on in his sleep after their Friday dinner together. By this time, he couldn’t even say much but his eyes would flutter with appreciation as he listened to his girl talk to him like she had all their lives together. Marrah wasn’t crying, she was at peace.

Marrah had stopped thinking of herself and her need to feel like she could stop fate if she tried hard enough. She changed her focus to him, to listen to him say all the things he may have wanted to say but did not find the opportunity to. She concentrated on listening to his goodbye, what he wanted for their sons and for her when he was gone.

She seized the moment to properly say goodbye. She told him about her fears and vulnerabilities. She let him know just how much their 30-strong years together meant to her. She relieved all their memories while he listened, even to the ones he had forgotten or he thought she exaggerated. He told her what he would like for his funeral, and more so, he told her to make sure she never lost her sparkle. Together, they bid each other farewell in a special way.

Marrah made sure her sons came home from school every weekend and spent time with their dad. She imparted the same principle in them, to live in the moment. They learnt to tell him about their dreams, aspirations and their fears. They allowed him to be their father, even from his deathbed.

The realisation that our loved ones are leaving us is a hard one to fathom. We believe that we are showing our love by trying hard to keep them alive, even when we know it is futile.

Without realising it, it stops being about them and more about us. We feel guilty for living while they are dying, scared that we are losing them and worried about our future without them.

We forget what it feels like for them, knowing they are leaving. We forget to give them a moment to make peace with the fact that they are leaving.

We forget to involve them in decision-making regarding what they would rather spend their last days on earth doing, knowing there is no tomorrow, literally. We do not realise just how selfish that may be.

It hurts to love someone and lose them. But in situations where death is inevitable, let us relook at what it means to make those days, the best they possibly could!

Dr Bosire is an obstetrician/gynaecologist