Yesterday, just before noon, my stepfather, Arthur James Collins, passed away in Oshawa hospital. He was my mother’s second husband.
I’d been sleeping temporarily at his place in Whitby while I got my feet on the ground during my return to college. But all was not well: he had persistent difficulty speaking from late August. He went in for a test in the first week of September and there was a possibility of throat cancer.
During the middle of September, he couldn’t sleep in his bed without coughing, so he slept sitting up on the couch. But then he seemed to be improving; Tuesday and Wednesday last week he managed to get some proper sleep.
Then came Thursday.
Last Thursday, while waiting for the bus as I left the college at 9PM, I got a message from my stepbrother. “Your stepfather won’t be coming home tonight.” I called back. He’d gone in for a scan, and they weren’t letting him come home.
During Friday more details filtered out. It was a fast-acting throat cancer. He had one or two weeks left. He didn’t want any ‘heroic measures’ taken, so this was likely it.
Monday and Tuesday I went to school as normal. Tuesday I left the college at 6PM and went directly to the hospital, only a 15-minute bus ride away. At the hospital, I discovered that the family was arriving. My stepbrothers, their wives, some of the kids, and various friends.
Art was breathing shallowly, but he was quite lucid and knew who we all were and spoke to us. They had cranked up the painkillers to make him comfortable. At different times, each of us held his hand. Several people were updating more distant relatives and friends by text, phone, and Facebook (no pictures).
My stepbrothers had arranged for a priest to come by. Around 7:30 he arrived, and gave the Last Rites to Arthur as we stood around in a circle and held hands. After the priest left, we talked and shared our company. It was comforting. I hadn’t actually seen my stepbrothers or their families for quite some time. Eventually, I left to get some sleep.
Wednesday morning, I got a text message that he was still hanging on. I went over to the hospital, but he passed away while I was on the way there.
It was so fast, less that a week. I’m awaiting word of the funeral arrangements, so I can let my aunt and sister know. (They live far away.) I believe he will be interred next to my mom in the same cemetery where my father and stepmother are also buried.
But of all the things I could have imagined, I never expected to be the last one of our family sleeping in that house. We are going to have to clear it out; it’s part of a co-operative (that Mom and Art helped found!), and there will be a new tenant eventually.
Clearing it out is going to be weird. There are still things from my childhood in the basement: I know this, because I was down there and I recognized them.
It’s been a bit odd sleeping there anyways, because I lived there during the last half of high school and during university and college, and for a time after I went to work. There are drawings I did hanging on the walls even now. After my mom died in 1996, Art started smoking again, and the walls are darker. He’s been renovating the place this summer though, and there are new floors and a new bathroom. I think the wallpaper what the next thing to be replaced. But nothing’s finished. Nothing looked the same, yet my body knew its way around without problem. Even the neighbourhood is the same, yet different, because the trees have grown up enough that nothing looks the same.
Art had welcomed me (a confused teenager) and my sisters into his family without hesitation when he married my mom. He became good friends with my aunt, my mother’s sister, and they remained friends after my mom passed away. He did his best to help me during the years when it seemed that my father wanted as little as possible to do with me.
When my mom was dying of ALS, he drove her 12 000 km across North America, to San Fransisco and Vancouver and back to Toronto, on a last holiday. She was losing her muscle power, so every day he fed her and helped he and loaded her into and out of the car. At home, he carried her up and down the stairs. He was totally devoted to her. And she to him. It took me a long time to understand where that strength came from.
He was English to the core. He played cricket and football (not “soccer”). He read the British papers. He introduced me to obscure British humour.
He was one of the only references I had for masculine style and deportment. Not that I ever lived his style; I went in a different direction.
I will miss him much. But maybe somewhere my mom is welcoming him with open arms.
I’m so sorry for your loss, though 