Photo credit: We’d like to thank internationally renowned street photographer Alan Schaller for permission to use Nick’s photo.
Nick was cared for by St Clare Hospice after he was diagnosed with prostate cancer.
‘Nick really respected Sam. She was so suited to him. He looked hard, because he loved a big gold chain, but he was a lovely character, who loved his Caribbean shirts.
‘He was one of those people who don’t just let anybody in or accept help easily, but he took to Sam because she was straight with him. It was a special relationship to see, with them sitting together talking in the garden, surrounded by flowers, while my son and I worked around them.’
Sam is one of our St Clare Hospice Clinical Nurse Specialists. She works in the community and visits people at home with complex life-limiting conditions.
Along with the rest of the team, Sam provides specialist advice and emotional and psychological support for both patients and their families. Sam’s specialist knowledge helped with Nick’s pain, which Denise describes as ‘pretty bad’, and she was so grateful to Sam for all she did for him.
‘Nick had been living with prostate cancer, before it spread to his bones. His decline was quick. Just two weeks before he died, he was mowing the lawn.
‘Nick didn’t ever really accept he was dying, and when he went into hospital for a water infection, we had to take him in his wheelchair in the back of our flower van!
‘The cancer had gone to his brain, and he began acting quite out of character, but in a funny way that brought a smile to our faces. One day, he put his hat on a lump of meat in the kitchen. I asked him what he was doing and he went, “I’m putting a hat on the donkey.” It wasn’t sad, it was uplifting!’
Denise says Nick never wanted to live as he did at the end, with a bed downstairs and all the medication.
‘It was just sad, really, to see him like that because he was such a fiery, fiery fella. When Nick was in hospital that last day before he died, he told me he was coming home, but I thought he can’t do that, he’s too ill. I now think he meant he was going to pass, because I’ve read since that people sort of class dying as “coming home”.
Denise feels that although Nick has died, he’s never far from her and the family. A rose has popped up in the garden in a pile of barren earth where Nick had buried their dog’s ashes. A red rose amongst white buds.
Denise recalls: ‘Recently, I was out walking and I looked up to the park and saw the most beautiful red rose looking right at me. And I went, “Morning, Nick.”
The next week, I thought, “I won’t look that way because I’m looking for it now.” So I’m not looking at the park, I’m looking the other way, and as I come down that same bit of street, there’s a great big red rose coming over a massive wall on the other side.
And I said, “Oh, you’re over there today, are you?” And I just get the feeling that’s some sort of sign he’s showing us to say he’s all around us.’