The Stubborn Scot

There is never a good time for bad news. And that bad news came late Saturday night when I received a phone call from my friend Elizabeth — telling me her husband of 16 years had breathed his last.

But this ain’t no regular obituary…

Duncan had been ill for years, battling cancer in one form or an other. Yet he never lost his cheer — even when the chemo was kicking the cramp out of his guts — somehow he’d manage a joke or two.

It was simply Duncan’s nature.

But around the first of April, his health took a turn for the worst. And oddly — it came as result of a vehicle accident that left him with a broken nose and fractured ribs.

Eventually, Duncan was admitted to the hospital because he couldn’t breath very well. At first it looked as if he had fought and won another round with his body — but then came the night he either got up too fast, became dizzy and fell or simply mis-stepped and toppled to the floor.

Either way, he laid there for several hours unable to get up or unwilling to move because it hurt too much. In the end his wife, Elizabeth had to call for a helicopter airlift to get him to the hospital as they live so far out in the high desert.

From that point, it was apparent that Duncan wasn’t going to return home anytime soon — if ever. However the stubborn Scot that he had always been — remained strong and true to the end.

It appeared that his body was against him from the onset as a massive and aggressive tumor developed out of nowhere in his neck and it slowly started to strangle his windpipe. But somehow Duncan held on — he kept breathing, even if it was in gurgling gasps.

At one point — she nearly ran from his hospital room — unable to continue listening to his ragged breathing. But she managed to steel herself and stay, knowing it could be the last moments of his life.

Finally when the doctors came to Elizabeth and told her that Duncan’s brain activity had ceased — she made the agonizing decision — knowing her husbands wishes — to remove all care other than an IV line for pain management. Still the stubborn Scot battled onward.

When most bodies fail and die after four days without fluid, Duncan was still emptying his bladder. It would take another four day’s to expire — but not before “going” one last time in the morning.

She joked, “My honey was full of piss right up to the last.”

A sense of humor — no matter how morbid it may seem to some can be a saving grace in the face of adversity.

By that evening — 6:11 to be exact — Duncan breathed his last. I was a hard-fought battle and while others may say he lost the fight — I say he won the war.

Now it is for his bride, Elizabeth to pick up and carry on.  She tells me she’s filled with both grief and relief.

While nothing has been finalized, Elizabeth is planning a celebration of life memorial for Duncan this June.  Her husband may have said it best though: “I want to put the ‘fun’ back into funeral.”