Bern Young’s moving account of her father’s final moments
Ahead of Father’s Day tomorrow, ABC Gold Coast presenter Bern Young, one of eight children, recalls the surreal morning her beloved dad passed away
FOR the first few days I couldn’t shake this feeling that I’d let my father die. Not just watched him die but let him die. It goes against every human instinct to just sit by someone’s side and watch them try to breathe, knowing any moment that gurgling sound of thick fluid from their lungs will drown them.
The sound of Dad’s chest woke me at exactly 12.40am Australia Day 2014. Before I even opened my eyes, I remembered where I was and what I was here to do.
Lying on the fold-out bed in his hospital room I didn’t, perhaps couldn’t, move. I lay completely straight and still and began a decade of The Rosary. Praying that Dad would be OK through the night, praying also for strength to see this night through.
When my older sister Tric and my brother Charlie had left only three to four hours earlier, I had suddenly felt sick to the stomach. Doubled over with cramps, I was afraid I wouldn’t be any good at this thing I’d volunteered to do.
Tric is a nurse and she’d taken me through what happens when someone dies of pneumonia. What I needed to be ready for.
Not that any of us really expected him to die that night. The palliative care doctor said that while it wasn’t an exact science, she thought Dad had two or three days left.
I lay in bed wondering if I moved whether I’d disturb him. He’d been so upset in recent months about losing precious sleep in the night. I figured I needed to go to the toilet and I’d check in on him while I went past. I never made it to the bathroom.
As soon as I saw his eyes, I knew. He was staring out the window, his now concaved chest heaving rhythmically but his face told me how little oxygen he was getting with every difficult breath.
I sat down beside him, took his left hand in my left hand and began stroking his head, telling him I was here. I began another decade of The Rosary. Not quietly like I’d done earlier in the day when we thought he was slipping off to sleep for the last time, surrounded by as many of his children who could be there. This time I had a sense of purpose. I said every word like it meant something. Holy Mary Mother of God pray for us sinners now, right now, Dad, and at the hour of our death.
I would stop between prayers to say something about the beautiful place he was going to, that it was time. I tried to smile, I didn’t want him to see a sad face as he left. My nose was like a tap, a bit like it is now as I try to recall those last precious moments.
His eyes still open, he tried to say something to me but no words could come out. I said: “It’s OK, you don’t need to talk. I know Dad, I know. You love us and our dear mother. And you’ll miss us.”
We love you, too, and we’re going to miss you.
An old hymn, Be Not Afraid, came into my head and I know I got the order of the verses all wrong. It had been so many years since I’d sung it but what I couldn’t sing I hummed.
This isn’t how I’d planned to say goodbye to Dad. I hadn’t planned anything. It all just poured out of me.
I didn’t call a nurse. I just kept talking and singing and praying. I lost it at one point – into my third or fourth decade of The Rosary I couldn’t even remember how Hail Mary went. I was muddling my words and I tried to laugh through the tears, telling Dad how silly I was. In retrospect, there are things about being with Dad as he died that were like being with my son when he was born. I hadn’t planned to do that without the help of some drugs but it didn’t work out that way and then you find yourself capable of doing something you simply have to do.
And like birth, there was a final stage. Like Dad’s tunnel into Heaven was now 10cm dilated and he was going whether I liked it or not.
I told him his mum and dad were waiting on the other side for him. That his dad hadn’t seen him for so long and he was going to be so happy. A life without struggle, without pain, with a love he couldn’t imagine. And Sr Julie would come and find him soon. An old nun I’d known in Perth, I’d felt Sr Julie’s presence as I’d recited The Rosary.
His last breaths were not gasps as I had feared. The lungs now completely full of fluid, they could take no more air. In the last minute or two, his attempts were shallower, still rhythmical but slower. And slower. And slower. And slower still. And then he didn’t breathe again. It was 1.20am And I wept like I’m weeping now. Silently. Violently. I held on to his left hand which at times I remember now I had squeezed harder and harder. I finished the decade of The Rosary and softly closed his eyes.
At some point, I reached over to finally call for a nurse. The light above his bed came on and I thought how convenient it was that a little light should come on when you hit the call button.
It would be another 10 minutes or so before I realised no one was coming (I’d accidentally hit the light button instead of the call button). I pried myself from his bedside and went out to the nurses’ station.
From my mouth came this voice which sounded nothing like me. I could only just say the words above a raspy whisper: “David Young has passed away”.