“We’ll die together” my father always said. “Dad, it’s not like that”, I’d laugh in response….. “I’m telling you now; we’ll die together” he would insist. “We do everything together”. It was true – he and Mum did everything together. The original Darby and Joan, Mum would laugh, wryly. “But that doesn’t mean you’ll die together!” I’d always reason… “Unless of course you die in a car crash or something, heaven forbid”… He’d have none of it. “You mark my words…”. And he was right, they did. Well, as good as… But it wasn’t a car crash that took them, and it wasn’t one dying and the other following shortly afterwards, their heart broken. No, they both died of cancer, 8 days apart, leaving just me, their “only child” – and childless – trying to accept that both people who had been the only fixed point in my entire life no longer existed. Yes… Isn’t it beautiful, romantic, apt… Two people who had always been together in life being together in death. Walking hand in hand into the afterlife… Yes… And if I’d known during those three horrendous weeks exactly how “the end” would come, it might not have been so traumatic. But of course, as the actual events unfold, you never know exactly where they are leading you, and every moment of those 3 weeks was incredibly painful for me. Because I didn’t know the ending of their story, and I tried to write it myself, but of course I had no control over anything.
“I want you forever. I will always be with you. I will always love you. I will love, honor, and cherish you for all eternity.”
Katrina Miller