THE DEATH OF A GOOD MAN

I only started this blog yesterday as a way of telling the story of Joe, but today, sadly I also need to tell the  story of my brother Mally. He was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer in January 2008. After chemo and an operation he was told that they had managed to remove most, but not all of the tumour.  This is an utterly cruel, devastating disease that few recover from. He survived for more than 4 years. His quality of life over the last 4 years however, begs the question, was any of it worth it? A once proud and good natured man who was the big brother to all of us was reduced to a dependence on others that eventually took away all of his dignity.

Throughout it all Mally had his wife,  Bev,  at his side and right through to the end she looked after him and kept her promise that he would die at home. Believe me, this wasn't easy and the horror that she went through is hard to describe. How you watch the man that you have loved for 43 years suffer in the way he suffered, I don't know. They have been together since she was 13 and he was 15 and have been married for 38 years. How she is going to get over this I don't know either. The only thing I do know is that nothing about life makes any sense right now. It certainly seems to me that no one ever gets what they deserve; because if they did, today wouldn't have seen the death of the good man I called my brother.