I wrote this song about a year after Sharon died.
Sharon died on June 25th 2004. I was there on that day. It was one of our Fridays. At that time I was teaching almost full time, but I didn’t teach on Fridays. So we could do nice things together, like going out for lunch or visiting garden centres and buying plants. Then I would help her to plant them where she wanted in her garden. She could have chosen to go to a Day Centre at Sobell House and get looked after there, but she chose to spend Fridays with me.
As Sharon got more ill and less mobile I would go and visit her. I would pick up any prescriptions or tablets she needed, “do” the tablets for the week, putting them carefully into the right spaces in her tablet organiser, and any odds and ends of things that needed doing. But mostly I wanted to be with her and talk to her and listen and just be there.
I remember her lovely smile as I came into the room. As always it lit up the room for me. I think I was late as usual. She was having a busy day with various people coming in to see her. By this stage she was living and sleeping in the sitting room downstairs, controlling the running of the house from her bed with phone, mobiles, TV controls etc. all within reach. She told me she’d had a bad time the previous evening, having difficulty in breathing, but that M had talked her through it like he used to do when she had panic attacks and needed to breathe slowly into a paper bag. She’d had some sleep and was reasonably comfortable, but she needed some more morphine, so I went out and picked up the tablets from Tesco’s dispensary.
Before I went, her Macmillan nurse came and talked with her and then spoke to me briefly in the kitchen. The nurse told me to be prepared, meaning that she thought that Sharon was close to dying, but I thought “What does she know?” for Sharon still seemed so in control of everything and was coping OK with the day.
There were phone calls and visitors and we were watching highlights from Big Brother. It must have been a brief gap between visitors when Sharon spoke to me quietly. She said she could take the pain, but she couldn’t handle this breathing thing. She was glad that the insurance meant she and M didn’t have to worry about money, but what was the good if they couldn’t go abroad or do all the things they’d wanted to do together. I listened and said I understood. We only had a few moments and then someone else came in.
The doctor came, Sharon’s lovely woman doctor, and was very kind and sympathetic, telling Sharon it would be a good idea to have a catheter so she didn’t have to struggle to get to the loo any more. And oxygen might be a good thing, in case she had any more breathing problems. And wouldn’t it be a good idea to have a hospital-type nightie so it was easier to wash and everything? Sharon was unimpressed and argued. So far she had managed to get to the loo using the frame. She liked to be in her own clothes. She didn’t want the house being made into a hospital for her and M’s sake. For ease she gave in, but she wasn’t happy about it. Being alive was doing it for yourself where you could, and wearing what you liked and making your own choices, even if they were limited ones.
Some more visitors came along, Hazel and her family and their little boy, Dylan, Sharon’s godson. M played with him and took him out in the sun in the garden to find the cats. Sharon welcomed them, but she was sleepy with the morphine and she drifted off.
Later two nurses came to sort out the catheter and the oxygen and to help Sharon into a nightie. I knew Sharon was afraid of being moved, but somehow neither of us said anything. The nurse wanted to help Sharon off with her beautiful, bright red, silky blouse and needed me to help Sharon sit up to do this. But suddenly Sharon couldn’t breathe. So I was holding Sharon, talking to her, saying “Don’t worry. You’ll be OK. Take it easy.” I tried to say things that would comfort her and calm her. What else could I do? M was out in the garden while the “hospital stuff” was going on. The nurse went out to get her colleague, who was unloading things from the car.
So it was just Sharon and me. I felt so helpless, knowing she’d had enough and that she wanted out, but wanting to save her, to help her, to make her live again. I just carried on holding her and talking to her, holding her hand and saying comforting words, thinking, “Why doesn’t someone come?” When the nurses came in I demanded that they do something, anything, to save her life, but there was nothing they could do. One of them went to fetch M and he touched her oh-so-gently, wiping a little bubble of saliva from her mouth.
There were phone calls to make. M’s mum and dad came as soon as they could. The nurses dressed Sharon in her special red and black dress with the wavy hem. The doctor came. No one could believe that she was gone. Alone with Sharon again I cried and wailed. My baby. My baby was gone.
‘Sitting Beside You’
As I sit and hold your hand
You’re going further and further away.
What can I do? I hold your hand.
I say some words to comfort.
What can I say?
This can’t be real. Oh no, it can’t be true!
I just can’t bear to say “Goodbye” to you.
Is this the hardest thing I’ll ever do?
Sitting beside you when you die.
Please don’t go!
I love you so.
Please don’t go!You said that you can’t bear it any more.
You said it’s time for you to go.
But I can’t bear to see you suffer so.
Sitting beside you when you die.Do not go gentle! Do not go gentle!
Do not go gentle into that good night.
I rage! I rage!
I rage against that cruel dimming of your light.Please don’t take your smile away from me
For it’s the one thing that I love to see
But now I know I have to set you free.
Sitting beside you when you die.
