#FOWC Release. Last Breath

FOWC with Fandango — Release

It had been ten days. She had not got over the shock, but she was determined not to let him go. It wasn’t that she really loved him, but she was used to him and she needed their daily fights. It was what fed her. And here he was in a hospital bed. At first it didn’t seem serious. They were going to rehabilitate him. A stroke. He would be okay. But a few days later they were asking her if she wanted him resuscitated. It seemed surreal. Then they told her that he was going to die anyway.

“Not likely,” she thought. “I’ll make him fight.”

And that summed up her life. Fighting.

She tried to talk to him. Told him he HAD to fight. And he DID. He put his fists up. At HER.

Louise knew why he had done that to her mother. Even at the very last she had to take control. She had never accepted illness. It was a mark of weakness and her poor father had never been allowed to be ill. And now he was dying – and that wasn’t allowed either.

He gradually deteriorated. Louise watched it all. She spent most of her hours with him. Her mother waltzed in and out as the fancy took her. It never registered with her that this was REAL. He really was going to die.

And so it was that on a Sunday morning he started to weaken. His breathing changed. Louise was on her own with him. At lunch time her mother put in an appearance, then went off to the hospital restaurant for her dinner. An hour later she waltzed back in. He was about to take his last breath. Louise was holding his hand and talking gently to him. He breathed his last.

“He’s gone,” the nurse said, whilst taking his pulse.

Louise screamed and fell back onto the wall of the room. Her mother stood at the foot of his bed looking at him.

“I had three children by him,” she said. And in that moment she had to RELEASE him.