My Story

by Daley, Tom

  But the atmosphere had changed. All my family were there but everyone would have to go to the kitchen at regular intervals for a cry; to try and not show him how upset they were. I just didn’t know what to do. It was horrible. By that point he had not drunk anything for about three days or eaten for five days. Mum kept saying to my brothers that he was ‘really poorly’ and that we needed to spend as much time with him as we could.

  We sat down with William and Ben and she kept saying how poorly he was.

  ‘YEAH I KNOW, HE’S ALWAYS BEEN REALLY POORLY,’ BEN SAID. FOR AS LONG AS HE COULD REMEMBER, DAD HAD BEEN IN AND OUT OF HOSPITAL. HE PRESUMED THAT HE WOULD HAVE SOME DRUGS AND GET BETTER. HE DIDN’T UNDERSTAND.

  ‘No, this time he’s really poorly … He could die, Ben,’ I whispered.

  I felt I had to say it. Maybe it was too difficult for Mum to find the words.

  That’s when Ben dissolved into tears and we all started crying, trying somehow to comfort each other.

  Nurses from Marie Curie and St Luke’s Hospice were coming in twice a day. I asked when the next round of chemo pills was and was told that he was too weak to have any more. I kept thinking, ‘What happens now?’

  They were giving him medication to reduce the swelling but the more steroids they gave him the weaker he got, so they were trying to find a balance. They were giving him morphine to reduce the pain but it made him confused. He didn’t know where he was. At one point he thought he was in the front seat of the BMW, which had been moved into the front room, three floors up. He used to get really angry about not being at home. It was very difficult. We tried to explain to him, but ultimately we knew it was the drugs that were making him disorientated.

  The following day he seemed a bit better and more lucid. Sitting on his bed I asked him if he wanted a sip of water and he did, so I syringed some into his mouth, and patiently waited for him to swallow. Later in the day, he was asking for McDonald’s and we rushed to get one and he ate it. Then he started to eat walnut cake and strawberry fool and he seemed to get better again. He helped me with my driving theory test revision, helping me memorize the answers to some of the questions, and was interested in training, asking which dives I had been practising.

  I continued to train as normal and tried hard when I was diving not to think about Dad. Whenever I was at home I would sit by his bed and talk to him and tell him what I was doing. Often I didn’t know whether he had heard me because it would take him about five minutes to reply, but I was patient and he always responded, even if it was a flicker of an eye or a brief smile.

  After about two weeks, he went back downhill again and stopped eating and drinking. It was then that the doctors said he had hours or days, but then he asked for a McDonald’s again and he seemed to get better. I still thought he could beat it, I still didn’t think he was going to die. Each time he seemed to recover slightly, everyone was like ‘Rob, you’re just having us on!’

  My family were still in and out of the house every day spending as much time as possible with him. I don’t think he knew how long he was in the bed for but he was unable to do anything for himself. My mum was amazing and every time he messed himself she would clean him up and I would help her by rolling him over. It was hard; you never think that you are going to have to do that for your dad.

  On my birthday I had my first driving lesson with my instructor, who was one of the diving parents. Dad wanted to get out of bed to watch me.

  ‘Just put the sides down so I can hop out and run up the drive,’ he said.

  NO ONE WANTED TO SAY NO, SO WE PUT THE METAL BEDSIDES DOWN. HE TRIED SO HARD TO GET HIMSELF UP – DETERMINATION WAS ETCHED IN EVERY CREASE IN HIS FACE – BUT, OF COURSE, HE COULDN’T. HIS LEGS JUST WOULD NOT MOVE FOR HIM. TEARS STARTED ROLLING DOWN HIS FACE AND HE BEGAN TO GET ANGRY.

  ‘PUT THE BED OUTSIDE! CARRY ME OUT! I WANT TO SEE TOM DRIVING.’

  I felt so sad; it felt like it was almost a bigger deal for him than it was for me. It was a shame for him.

  My lesson went well, and when I got back my Aunty Marie had made me a cake with L plates on the top in white and red icing. We showed it to Dad, who smiled and ate a slice.

  A few days later my new black Mini arrived from BMW, but we didn’t tell him because we knew he would have wanted to come out and see it and he would not have been able to. It was just easier and less painful for everyone. That week I was on study leave, which made it a bit easier because I was at home. And, of course, I was really delighted with my new set of wheels and was looking forward to the freedom it would give me to travel around, especially to training every day, as Mum was doing everything for everyone: ferrying us about, cooking, cleaning and looking after Dad. Some of my friends like Sophie had already passed their tests, so I was keen to get mine under my belt as soon as I could.

  Early on the Friday morning, Mum called my brothers and me downstairs in a panic. Dad was struggling to breathe. He had the oxygen mask on but his breathing sounded really wheezy and laboured. Mum told us to run down the road to get one of our neighbours who is a nurse and had looked after Dad in hospital. She rushed up to the house with us and gave him the asthma drug Ventolin, which he had been taking for a while. Thankfully, it seemed to help.

  I went to training as normal but I was all over the place and could not concentrate on what I was doing. I got about halfway through the sessions and told Andy I wasn’t able to do it. I was on my way back to the house when Mum called me to tell me that she thought I needed to come home.

  When I arrived back at the house everyone was round Dad’s bed. I could tell he was exhausted – his eyes were watering because he was putting so much effort into breathing. The doctors said he had hours but I still felt we had been there before. He could pull through; he was strong.

  But this time was different and I think, deep down, I knew it. Each breath came ten seconds apart, then twelve seconds, then twenty seconds, then twenty-five seconds, then thirty seconds.

  We all whispered our goodbyes to him while we thought he could hear us. It was incredibly emotional – I told him how much I loved him and thanked him for everything he had done for me. Periodically, his breathing would pick up and then become stretched out again. I didn’t want to leave him and held his hand the entire time. I have a large cuddly monkey and he managed one final hug.

  At about 9 p.m. we decided to take the oxygen mask off. The doctor told us it would not make any difference and Dad hated it being on his face.

  Then it felt like a waiting game, it was awful. We were taking his heart rate and at one stage it reached 180 beats per minute. The doctor said it would have been the equivalent of running a marathon. His oxygen levels were a third of the amount they should have been and he was breathing really fast. I was holding his hand and told him to squeeze my hand.

  I was willing him on and was telling him, ‘Come on, Dad. You can get through this, I know you can.’ He fingers closed around my hand and I felt the smallest amount of pressure.

  He could still hear me and I didn’t want to let go.

  Soon after, he fell unconscious and his breathing slowed down again and he would make us all jump when he did take a breath. Everyone was in the room – Mum, William, Ben, both sets of grandparents, my Aunty Marie and Uncle Jamie, and their families. We all had our sleeping bags and planned to sleep in the room with him.

  Eventually his breathing slowed and slowed and the inhalations were coming so far apart until they finally just stopped.

  Everyone started crying – I just looked at him and could not believe it. I was like, ‘What? Is that it?’

  I sat holding his hand for the next half an hour. As the tears ran down my face, I stroked his head. He just looked like he was sleeping. After a while I took his hand from under the cover where I was holding it. His skin was completely white and his nails and veins were so pale they were hard to see; I could not get my head around the fact that there wasn’t any blood running through his arms. It didn’t make sense.

  I
let go of his hand and gave him one final hug, feeling his once strong body in my arms. The nurses had arrived and did the final checks. We wrapped him in his favourite Union Jack blanket so he would not get cold.

  I went into the kitchen and sobbed with everyone else.

  It’s like time had stopped but a while afterwards, back in the front room, I leant over to give him one final kiss. His head felt cold on my lips.

  I walked away. I know the undertakers came and carried him out on a stretcher but I didn’t want to see that; see the last time he would ever be in our home. The place he was always laughing, joking, making us breakfast, helping us with our homework. It didn’t seem real.

  I found out that in 2006 he was told that he maybe had months or perhaps a year at the most to live and he kept exceeding everyone’s expectations. It was almost like his personality could beat it.

  At about 3 a.m., we all went to bed. Ben went in with Mum and my Grandma Jenny and Granddad Doug stayed too. Lying in bed, I tossed and turned as a million thoughts were whirring round my head: How can I not have my dad here? How come my dad will never see 2012? He’s never going to see my A-Level results. He’s never going to meet my children. Why us? I thought about everything I had done, every podium I had stood on with Dad looking on crying, every training session I had been to and Dad was there in the balcony talking to the other parents, clapping each dive I made. Hundreds of thousands of them and he clapped every one. I thought about everything I want to do and to achieve and the fact he would never see it. It felt so unfair.

  Waking up in the morning, my first thought was that it was a normal Saturday and I needed to go training and then I remembered and I felt terrible beyond words.

  The news was released to the media and there was a real outpouring of condolences on Twitter and Facebook. Then the flowers started arriving. The house looked like a florist’s – even McDonald’s sent a massive bouquet. We had hundreds of letters and cards, including ones from the Prime Minister and Seb Coe. It didn’t make it any easier, but it felt good to hear how many people he had touched. It seemed like the nation was as shocked as we were.

  It was important that we had stuff to focus on. Dad hated flowers because he thought they were a waste of money, although he liked them in gardens, so we decided to set up a JustGiving site so people could donate the money they would have spent on flowers to charity. We decided on three charities: Marie Curie Cancer Care, St Luke’s Hospice and the Samantha Dickson Brain Tumour Trust. Within seven minutes of it going live, there were ten donations.

  We met with the funeral director and talked about what we wanted. We decided to have the funeral at the church where Mum and Dad had got married nineteen years before and we started to think about what music we should have and dig out photos of him. It was really difficult; Dad had never talked about what he wanted, he never thought he was going to die. Right up until the last breath I know he thought he would beat it, as we all did. We decided to cremate him.

  The whole experience was completely surreal. I kept expecting him to walk through the front door and make a joke. Because it was a Bank Holiday weekend the hospital bed was still sat in the front room with all his sheets on and every time I walked in there it served as a painful reminder. I kept thinking about how his hugs felt, the exact pressure of his thick arms around me, exactly the way he spoke. I cannot believe that as I get older, his picture will stay young. My brain didn’t stop whirring with thoughts about how unbelievable it felt.

  On the Monday we went to see him at the Chapel of Rest. It was William’s fifteenth birthday and Will was so gutted he had made it through mine and Ben’s birthdays but not quite to his. He was lying in a coffin with his hands on his stomach and I hated the thought he would be like that when the lid was shut. He was cold and they had put make-up on him so he didn’t look too white. We decided to bury him in his ‘Give Me Oil in My Lamp’ T-shirt. We knew he would have hated being in a suit. The year before, my brothers and I had bought him a ‘No. 1 Dad’ cuddly bear so we put that in the coffin with him and all wrote birthday cards, Father’s Day cards and anniversary cards, which were all coming up.

  I went back to training on Tuesday as normal. I knew he would not want me to stop. In his last days, he would ask me every time I was by his bed why I wasn’t at training, even if it was midnight.

  We tried to continue as normal and I had my driving theory test that Tuesday, which I passed. In my haste, I dialled the number I always did: Dad’s. As it rang out I realized what I had done, hung up and rang Mum instead. Dad would always be the first person I spoke to.

  The family really rallied around and everyone came over at least once a day. On one day Brooke and Malia were at home with us. I’ve always loved being with my young cousins.

  ‘Where’s Robert?’ Brooke asked.

  ‘He’s gone out for a minute, Brookie,’ I told her.

  Later, up in my bedroom, I was with Malia and she asked so many lovely questions.

  ‘Has Robert gone with the angels now?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, he’s an angel now,’ I said.

  ‘What – a man can be an angel?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So where did he get dressed before he went to be an angel?’

  ‘They get dressed automatically – it’s like magic.’

  ‘So if he’s an angel, he can see me now?’

  ‘Yes, he can,’ I told her and she started waving out my bedroom window.

  ‘Hi, Uncle Robert.’

  ‘Every time I have a Creme Egg now, I’m going to think of Uncle Robert.’

  Dad had used to joke with Malia that there was a special bird that lays Cadbury’s Creme Eggs and he had this special box he decorated with glitter and each time she came round he would give her the box and she would open it and there would be an egg inside from the ‘special’ bird.

  I was nervous about the funeral but knew I could never prepare myself. About 500 people packed out the small church. I was just going to go up to the rostrum and speak; I didn’t prepare anything, but the Vicar told me to jot a few words down in case my mind went blank, so I did. We played ‘Unchained Melody’, which was the song that Mum and Dad had their first dance to at their wedding, and the congregation sang ‘ Sing Hosannah’ because the words ‘Give Me Oil in My Lamp’ had become so symbolic in Dad’s battle.

  When I stood up to speak I didn’t use my sheet of notes, I just spoke about the things that I remembered and will always remember about Dad.

  As I walked to the rostrum, I took my time. I had a horrible lump in my throat and didn’t want to cry. I talked about the normal stuff: how he always used to make pancakes for us for breakfast, how he would always take me to training and watch me, William and Ben do our sports, how he’d always put on a brave face, how he was the practical joker and all the memories everyone has of him. How whenever anyone thinks of Rob Daley, they smile.

  In the crematorium, it was a small private family ceremony. We played Adele’s ‘Make You Feel My Love’ as Dad was on the table. I could not believe that was it.

  Afterwards we all went to the wake at a nearby hotel and tried to remember the good times and drink in celebration of his life. Everyone who was there stopped me to say sorry, but I found it difficult to know what to say in response. There were pictures and videos of Dad on loop on the big screen.

  That same day I had to go the National Championships in Leeds. I just needed to go because I knew Dad would have wanted me to go and perform as normal. I just wanted to do my best.

  Pete and I were pulled out of the synchro that Friday because we had not had time to prepare.

  I didn’t get hung up on my performance. I just chatted to everyone as normal and tried to be how I always am. Of course I was sad and shocked and a million other emotions, but so much of my life involves compartmentalizing what is going on, so I just tried to focus on my diving and not think about Dad. I have been working like that for such a long time I do not find it an impossible task. Mum was there
supporting me with all the other diving parents.

  I didn’t do any media because I was worried about getting upset, so I just released a statement saying: ‘I came here because my Dad would have wanted me to be here. I have my main event in the 10m individual and I can’t wait.’

  In the 3m springboard I didn’t do particularly well, finishing fifth overall, with victory going to Jack Laugher. In the individual, I was on fire in the prelims and was leading halfway through the final but eventually had to settle for second place in the final after not getting enough rotation speed on my front four and a half somersaults, which cost me crucial points. I finished on 465.90 to Pete’s 525.35 and Max was just 0.9 points behind me. Pete had struggled with his front four and a half, too, in the prelims after getting a failed dive because he only managed three and a half rotations. However, he executed it brilliantly in the final and earned three perfect 10s and a score of 107.30. The key is the start – it needs to be absolutely perfect. If you do not get enough height and speed, then it all goes to pot towards the latter end of the dive. Of course I was disappointed with my score, but I knew my preparation in the run-up to the competition wasn’t great, and as my career progresses I find it hard to get into the same mental space as when I am at an international event with the atmosphere and pressure that brings.

  After the National Championships it was Mum and Dad’s anniversary, Dad’s birthday and then Father’s Day within a week. We went out for meals where we thought Dad would have liked to have gone. Father’s Day was particularly hard because there were so many adverts everywhere. I know it’s something I will have to get used to but it was weird. I was still so shocked and it just didn’t seem real. I hope it gets easier.