Tomorrow September 9th, 2013 will be the 11th anniversary of Paul's death. Paul was in my life briefly when I was 17 years old, at that time their was a possibility that he fathered my second child. After that time he disappeared from my life for almost 40 years, or I disappeared from his, as I was the one who ran away, I ran away from my home, my husband, my life I guess. I took my two babies and ran.
In 1995 first my sister then my dad died. It was a difficult time, I was shaken and probably in some state of trauma. I recall walking around all day humming "Staying Alive, Staying Alive". It wasn't a conscious thing, my humming and when I was made aware of it I recall thinking I don't even know that song, I didn't know any other words, just staying alive. It felt like everyone I knew and loved was dying, I had also lost my best friend Joy, who was 3 years younger than me, as was my sister.
Sometime early in 1996 I received a telephone call from Paul. He had gotten my number from my eldest stepbrother. I was still humming Staying Alive and I recall thinking maybe there is a reason for "Staying Alive". It took almost a full year before Paul visited me at my home in Fenelon Falls. We talked a couple of times a week for that year. His wife had died 2 years earlier so he was a widower. His mother stilled lived in St Catherines and when she became ill Paul made the first trip from his home in Illinois to Ontario to visit his Mother and meet with me. I remember feeling like the 17 year old me again. The first time Paul came to visit I was alarmed at how thin he was. He told me then that he had had an operation 2 years before for colon cancer and his prognosis wasn't good, the Drs gave him 2 years to live. I chose to ignore this, I just wanted someone to fill the empty hole that was inside me.
Paul's mother died and Paul spent the best part of a year with me. He had to return to Illinois for more surgeries and once again was given a year to live. Paul outlived this prognosis by two years, The last two years of his life was hell, for me and for him, He was so angry and eventually I became angry also. I wanted him out of my life, I wanted my life back again, yet how do you do this when the Dr are saying he has only weeks, perhaps months to live. When in fact he lived two more years.
I don't sound like a very nice person, even to myself as I write this and remember this. My job was my life saver at this time. I began booking evening clients so I wouldn't have to go home. He began drinking more heavily and the anger boiled over in him more ofter. Somehow we got through those two years. I remember thinking "this man will never die, he will always be sick and miserable but he will never die.
On September 5th of that year he was crying and I was crying. Paul had been sleeping in a reclining chair for almost 2 years because he couldn't breath lying down. By that time the cancer was in his lungs, prostate and every part of his body. That day September 5th, I asked him to come and lay in the bed with me. I removed his housecoat that he now lived in and held his naked, skeletal frame in my arms and we both just cried. Two days later he was hospitalized again, this time for the last time.
I still didn't believe he would die, I thought he would come home again and continue being sick and miserable. On September the 9th, 2002 I stopped in the hospital on my way to work. Apparently Paul had had a stroke or something during the night. He was incapable of speech, yet he still had incredible strength and was propped up in bed slamming himself back and forth on the pillows, he was making noise but I couldn't make out what he was trying to say. His eyes were full of naked, overwhelmimg fear. I went for a nurse to give him morphine or something to calm him. Eventually she appeared with a needle. Before she give him the needle she called me. There was alarm in her voice, she said "he is dying now" and he was. I took him in my arms and whispered in his ear, I kept this up until she pulled me away. I sat by his bed for about half an hour. His eyes were wide open and a single tear was running down the left side of his face. His mouth was wide open and there was a string of spittle going from bottom lip to his top lip. I sat all that time looking at that sting of spittle, thinking isn't that strange, I should break it, but I didn't.
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