Stood at the foot of a bed, on a sunny late July afternoon, I watched someone die.
It happened in a small beige dormered room with blue carpet, cheap knocked about pine furniture and a large hospital grade bed. Family pictures were randomly placed on the walls and an old NHS red battered wheelchair was folded up in the corner.
My partner’s father, not long past his 75th birthday, lay in the bed gasping for air; his one good eye unfocused and I noticed that the for the first time in the ten years that I had known him the TV was off. We had been left alone after the care home staff had called us in urgently - their experience in End of Life Care meant they knew what was coming and they had prepared us for it. For me it was the first time, my