From Bray to Eternity

by Andy Halpin

  The first piece of music Gina played was a piece by Mozart, whose music Annette loved. As the sound filled the room Annette responded by moving her right hand as if keeping time with the music. This was confirmation to us that she could indeed hear and understand what was happening. We talked to her all the time but we got no response back. Annette seemed to be paralysed on her left side, she did not move her left arm or leg at all after she was moved to St. John’s ward.

  We sent word to the rest of the family and to Annette’s friends about what had happened. We told them they could come and visit Annette if they wished to do so. Over the next few days there was a constant stream of visitors saying goodbye to Annette.

  On Easter Saturday night Annette’s friend, Fr. Derek Farrell came to the hospital after he had celebrated Mass in his own church. He said prayers for Annette with David and me. He stayed talking with us for a while before he had to go.

  After Fr. Farrell left Annette showed signs of uneasiness and began to move in the bed. I spoke to her and asked if she could hear me, but she continued to be uneasy. I thought she might be in pain so I asked her but I got no real response. She seemed to be trying to open her eyes. I thought she might be coming out of the coma, so I continued to speak to her and hold her hand. I again asked if she was in pain but Annette did not respond. She continued to move in the bed and her eyes opened once or twice.

  I was concerned that she might be in pain and unable to let us know so I tried a new approach. I asked her to try to raise her little finger if she was in pain. Nothing happened. I then said if you are not in pain raise your little finger. Immediately her little finger shot up. I was delighted with this response, it meant she could hear what I was saying and she was not in any pain. It also meant she was not brain damaged.

  I began to speak to Annette again now that I knew that she could hear and understand me. She seemed to relax and stopped moving around in the bed. I held her hand and told her everything that had happened. I said that Fr. Derek had been there and had prayed for her. David also spoke to her and when he had to go, he asked her for a kiss. Annette puckered her lips and tried to lift her face to be kissed by him. This was in the early hours of Easter Sunday and I began to believe that Annette was going to have a resurrection and come out of the coma she had gone into on Holy Thursday.

  I stayed with her all night, talking and singing to her. I’m sure she could hear what I was saying. She held my hand in a firm grip and was very relaxed. I took the opportunity to tell her how much I loved her. I went over our life together, reminding her of all the good times we’d had and telling her there was going to be many more good times when she got better. I also told her how sorry I was for all the times I had hurt and disappointed her, promising never to do so again. I spoke, sang and kissed non-stop until the morning light brightened the room. Annette was completely relaxed when the nurse came in to check on her, early on Easter Sunday morning.

  I stayed with Annette until the family came back about mid-morning. All Easter Sunday we had candles lighting and music playing in the room. We even had our lunch there just as if it was home. It was a beautiful atmosphere and Annette’s sisters and friends came and visited during the day.

  Later that day Annette lapsed back into the coma she had seemed to be coming out of the previous night. She did not respond to any words or to the music we played. The only consolation was she did not appear to be in pain or distressed in any way. To all intents and purposes she looked as if she was in a deep sleep.

  That night Gina, David and Robert insisted that I go home for some sleep, but I did not want to leave Annette. I wanted to stay with her and do what I had done the previous night, talk and sing to her.

  After protracted discussions I agreed to go home with Gina, on condition that I would stay with Annette on Monday night. But as we were on the way to Gina’s house I changed my mind. I insisted that I wanted to go back to the hospital to be with Annette and Gina reluctantly brought me back. David stayed that night as well. We were given a room to sleep in and we took turns staying with Annette through the night.

  CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

  By Easter Monday Annette was deep in a coma. She was completely unresponsive to all attempts to communicate with her. We continued to play her music and speak to her, but to no avail.

  A very disturbing and distressing incident happened later that day. Up to Sunday, Annette had been on a drip to feed her, but when the feed was finished on Sunday night a new bottle of food was not put on. At first, we did not think much about this. We assumed that a new feed would come in a while. But by Easter Monday morning, no new food had been set up for Annette. We asked a nurse when Annette would be getting her food again, only to be told that the duty doctor had told the nurses not to set up Annette’s feed again. This doctor was supposed to visit Annette that morning and speak to us, but he had not done so. He was also not a member of Dr Kinsella’s team. I asked to see this doctor but he would not come back to the ward to speak to me so I asked a nurse to get him on the phone. When I challenged him on why he had issued instructions that Annette was not to be given any more food his response was that Annette had, “a very large tumour and would not get better.” In other words he was about to let her die and not waste any more food on her.

  I demanded to speak to this so-called doctor face-to-face but he would not come to the ward. This was maybe just as well, if he had come and repeated what he’d said so coldly to me on the phone I think he would have been in need of a doctor himself. He was not in the least helpful or sympathetic about our concerns. I demanded that he resume Annette’s feed. He was reluctant to do so, citing “her large tumour” as a reason. I told this doctor what I thought of him and contacted Dr Kinsella. Although he was off duty that day, he came in and spoke to us.

  Dr Kinsella was shocked by this turn of events, saying it should never have happened. He arranged for the food to be given to Annette immediately. This was a very distressing incident and one we should have pursued at the time. We should have confronted this doctor face-to-face, and made him explain his reason for withholding Annette’s food, but because events soon over took us we did not take it further. I am sorry now that we did not do so. Doctors like taht man are not fit to practice in our hospitals. He was totally desensitized to our distress and to Annette’s condition. Annette had her family to speak up for her but how many other patients had this ‘doctor’ decided had lived long enough, especially if they had no one to speak up for them.

  We told Dr Kinsella this man’s name. I hope he spoke to him about his disgraceful behaviour, his lack of concern for patients and their families and reminded him of his Hippocratic Oath. Though after speaking to this man I doubt if it meant anything to him.

  Dr Kinsella looked at Annette while he was in and told us she was very weak. In the gentlest way he told us that he did not think she would last much longer. At the prompting of the family he also told me to go home and get some rest as I would be no good to anyone if I collapsed through fatigue. I was still reluctant to leave Annette, especially if she did not have much longer to live. Though even then I did not fully believe she was going to die. I felt that she would prove all the doctors wrong by coming out of the coma and recovering.

  As night fell pressure was again applied to me to go home and rest but I was resisting it. I wanted to stay. I pointed out that I would sleep for a while in the room provided to us by the hospital and I would be ok. However the family were still insisting that I go home. When Annette’s friend Maureen Monahan, offered to stay with her and contact us if anything happened I gave in to the pressure and went home with Gina.

  We went home at about ten o’clock on Easter Monday night and at 11.30 p.m., after about a half hour in bed we were summoned back to the hospital. When we got there Maureen was still with Annette, but we told her she could go now as we would stay for the rest of the night.

  Annette’s breathing was very shallow and there seemed to be long gaps between her breaths. I sat with
her for a while, holding her hand and talking to her, but there was no response at all from her. She was almost gone from us.

  The nurses on duty were monitoring her all the time. They told us it looked like the end was near. David, Gina and Robert told me to get a rest as I was out on my feet from lack of sleep and they would stay with Annette. I went into the rest room which was just up the hall and tried to doze off for a while.

  I think I may have slept for an hour or so before I heard David call me. We rushed back to Annette’s room just in time to be with her as she passed away from us, at 4.21 a.m. on Easter Tuesday morning.

  To this day I do not fully remember Annette passing. I remember rushing into the room, and I am told I sat beside her and held her hand and spoke to her as she breathed her last, but it’s all just a haze to me. It was a dreamlike state as we waited for the priest and doctor to come and pronounce Annette dead.

  Looking back now, I don’t believe I fully realised then that Annette was gone from us. I don’t remember crying or even feeling sad, I was just going through the motions. The reality of what had happened had not sunk in. I remember leaving the hospital and going to Robert’s house, but I was not fully comprehending what had happened. Annette was dead but it just had not registered with me at all. I felt quite normal and not at all perturbed by what had happened.

  Later Robert and I went back to Raheen Green where David and Gina had arranged to meet the undertaker to plan Annette’s funeral. I was still in a world of my own and did not fully understand what was happening. I had no idea about where we should bury Annette, and it was Gina who suggested Bohernabreena to which I said yes, in all honesty if she had said Timbuktu I would probably have said yes as I was not functioning at all in a rational way. The fact that Annette was dead and we were planning her funeral did not penetrate my consciousness at all.

  On Tuesday evening Gina and I went to the undertaker’s premises in Aungier Street to see Annette laid out. I still did not comprehend what had happened. I was quite relaxed about it all. Gina had been nervous about seeing her mother laid out in a coffin but when we saw Annette she looked as if she was sleeping. She looked beautiful, with her hands clasped across her chest, holding her rosary beads. Gina was so happy to see how well Annette looked, she looked exactly like herself. When we came out of the undertakers, we went across the road to the Swan Bar. It was the bar myself and Gina, in her wedding dress, had had a drink in on the day of her wedding. We had been circling around waiting for David, her husband-to-be, to arrive at the church, the Unitarian Church on Stephens Green. As we had our drink after the undertakers, we remarked on the different circumstances prevailing then, to the sad occasion now.

  We brought Annette home on Wednesday afternoon and laid her out in the front room, facing the mountains she loved. We filled the house with candles and played her music all the time. We did not want this time, the last day and night Annette would spend in her own home in Raheen Green, to be sad or depressing. She would not have wanted that. We wanted to celebrate her life and send her to her reward in a joyous way. She looked fantastic in the clothes Gina had picked for her final journey. I put her bible, a family picture and her passport into the coffin with her. I left her wedding ring on her finger because I will not let even death part us. We will be forever married, from here to eternity and when I go to join her I will be wearing my wedding ring.

  All her friends and family came to say their final goodbyes to her and joined with us in celebrating her life. It was a life I was lucky to share and be part of for over forty years. On Thursday evening, after a day of rain which stopped long enough for us to walk the short distance to St. Mark’s Church behind her coffin, Annette left her home in Raheen Green for the last time. The local gardai, mindful of how well known Annette was, provided an escort to the church. They stopped the traffic while the cortege passed the junction at Fortunestown Lane.

  The short ceremony of accepting Annette’s remains into the church was filled with music. The combined choirs of St. Mark’s church and the Priory Prayer Group, of which Annette was a member, played and sang. This would have pleased Annette very much.

  After the ceremony the extended family came back to the house. We had a glass of wine and toasted Annette’s life. Robert stayed with me the night before the funeral and early the next morning Gina, David, Ciara and Dave came down. I had asked the choirs to play as much of Annette’s music as they could fit into the funeral Mass. They played and sang four of Annette’s songs: With you Beside me, The Breastplate, Windows of Your Soul and To The Ends of The Earth. Just before the Mass started and with the permission of Fr. Gerard Doyle, the local curate, I played a recording of Annette herself singing one of her songs, When the Summer Comes Round Again. As Annette was taken from the church I had a recording of Frank Sinatra singing “From Here to Eternity” played. Only later did I realise that Sinatra was there at both the beginning and the end of our earthly relationship.

  The Mass was celebrated by Annette’s friend, Fr. Derek Farrell. He gave a very personal and moving eulogy. Fr Farrell spoke of Annette’s generosity, her sincerely held beliefs, her concern for people, especially those who were marginalised or excluded and her achievements.

  After the mass Annette was laid to rest in Bohernabreena Cemetery, near the mountains she loved. The family and many of her friends came back with us to the Plaza Hotel for a light lunch. Music was provided by Tom Quinn, the friend who was involved in the “Nighthawks” show with me in November 2008. The night at which I now believe my mother had forewarned me about Annette’s death, but at the time I did not understand her words.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  After Annette’s passing I was numb for a few days. I still did not fully realise what had happened. But then, when it was all over and I was in the house alone, the walls caved in. Only then did the magnitude of what had happened hit me. When everyone was gone and I was surrounded with quietness and solitude my tears burst forth and my loss overwhelmed me. The children wanted me to stay with them, but I just wanted to be alone in the house, with my memories.

  When the reality of what had happened hit me I was grief-stricken, and it was then that the strange but comforting things started to happen. On the second Saturday after Annette’s passing I was having a particularly bad day. I had heard people say in the past, that after a loved one died they had felt their presence all around them. But since her passing I could not feel Annette’s presence, not at all. I had not even dreamt about her.

  That Saturday I was crying and calling on Annette to let me have some kind of a sign that she was still around and all right. I was desperate for a sign. Something I cried, anything, a sign to let me know she was not just a memory.

  The day dragged and later that night, as I was about to go up to bed, I was sitting on the couch gazing at the blank TV screen. I had just turned it off when I heard a light “plop” sound. It was the sound of something hitting Annette’s tambourine which was on a bookshelf across the room. I looked in that direction and saw a sheet of paper on top of the tambourine. I don’t know how long this piece of paper had been on the shelf. I did not even know what it was or what was on it.

  I got off the chair and went over to the tambourine. Sitting on top of it, as if it had been carefully placed there, was the sheet of paper. On top of the paper was a small, white, carefully folded handkerchief which Annette had at some time in the past brought home from Medugorje. I picked it up and looked at what was written on the sheet of paper:

  Let it go

  Let it go my friend

  Just let it go and never look back

  Let it go my friend

  Let me be the one to set you back on the track

  My friend you can depend on me

  Let it go my friend

  There’s nothing you need to be frightened of

  And you know my friend in the midst of your pains you’ll experience my love

  My friend you can depend on me

  Place your trust in me, />
  I’ll guide you all the way, why even the blind can see and the deaf hear

  what I say

  Let it go my friend

  Let go of the pain; let go of the hurt

  Time will show you my friend

  I already know how much you’re worth

  My friend you can depend on me

  How the piece of paper and handkerchief managed to fall as they did was a mystery. There was no breeze and the windows were closed. After reading the prayer I put them back on the shelf. I tried to make them fall onto the tambourine in the same way, but, try as I might it was not possible to do so, unless I placed them on the tambourine by hand. Every time I let them fall from the shelf they fell separately onto the floor, well away from the tambourine. Was Annette answering my cries of despair?

  This was the first of a series of strange occurrences that followed Annette’s passing. All of them were a great comfort to me, and they were all inexplicable. By nature I was a sceptic and a cynic, and I had little, indeed no faith in organised religion. I had been born a Catholic but I did not practice it or any religion. I had not done so for over thirty years. Even when I did go, it was without much conviction. I just went to Mass with Annette and the kids on a Sunday morning and sat there bored until it was over. At one time this was a huge issue between us, as Annette was a committed Christian all her life. She felt I should have given the children a better example and backed her up when they began to neglect their faith during their teenage years. But I could not tell them to do something I was not doing or did not believe in myself. Over the years we had gradually come to accept and respect each other as the people we were and got on with life.