My First Bedside Vigil: How my husband led me to this work

My husband Paul died after living with pancreatic cancer for five long, relentless years.

He was loving, handsome, funny, and smart. He was also a big personality - challenging, complicated, and frustratingly stubborn. All traits which, I believe, helped him navigate his illness with such fierce determination.

Paul was a legend. Not just to me, but to anyone who witnessed the way he lived with cancer. He faced those five years of brutal chemo, marathon-length surgeries, and extreme physical pain with grace, grit, and his own brand of ridiculous, irreverent humour. He had an English sensibility - macabre, silly, often inappropriate - and when I tried to bring up end-of-life conversations, he’d crack a joke and change the subject. That was his way of coping. Talking about death wasn’t on his agenda. Living well with cancer, on his own terms, certainly was.

Even as the cancer spread and his body weakened, Paul never felt sorry for himself. He never stopped wanting to be part of the world - especially for our  three kids. I know it quietly broke his heart to face the possibility of missing their milestones, their lives unfolding without him. And yet, he never gave in to despair. He simply kept going.

One night, Paul’s pain became unbearable. I called an ambulance, expecting another routine hospital visit - adjust the pain medication, a scan, a procedure, then back home. But deep down, I knew this time was different.

Our beautiful palliative care doctor gently explained what we’d been dreading: Paul was actively dying. This was the moment we’d spent five years trying to avoid.

We were asked where Paul wanted to spend his final days. At first, he chose the palliative care unit, half an hour from home. He wasn’t afraid of death - but he feared the impact of it on our children. He didn’t want them to witness it. But when the doctor explained that shielding them might actually cause more harm than good, Paul softened. He said if they wanted to, the kids could make the decision.

And when we asked them, they didn’t hesitate: they wanted Dad to come home.

“Excellent. Let’s go home then,” Paul said, in that accepting, matter-of-fact way of his.

What I didn’t realise was what “home” would require. Although I’d been Paul’s carer for years, this was a whole new level of care. I was taught how to administer round-the-clock morphine and anxiety medication through a needle inserted under his skin. I learned how to aspirate the fluid building in his abdomen. These were medical tasks I’d never imagined doing - things nurses perform with calm expertise. And while the nurses were wonderful, they were only there in our home for maybe one hour out of every twenty-four. The rest of the time, it was up to me. I was terrified - what if I couldn’t attach the syringe properly? What if I gave him too much morphine, or not enough? But I was willing. I had to be. I wanted to be.

And again, Paul was a legend. He surrendered fully. He never said he was scared. He accepted what was happening, and for that, I am endlessly grateful.

Those final days became my first bedside vigil.

I can only describe it as existing outside of ordinary time. Hours felt like minutes; minutes felt like hours. The world narrowed down to Paul in the bed, his breath, the quiet, the waiting. There was a profound shift that happened when time became finite and love became your entire focus.

For years, I had felt helpless in the face of Paul’s illness. But now, I had something I could do. I could help him die. It was intimate. Tender. Sacred.

Being there - by his side, easing his pain, witnessing his final days - was the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. But it was also the greatest privilege of my life. Sitting vigil with someone you love as they die is a heartbreaking honour. I wasn’t prepared for it. And yet, somehow, I found myself capable.

The most precious moment of all was the hours the kids and I spent with him after he died. Still. Quiet. Just us.

That experience changed me. It opened something in me.

Paul was my first bedside vigil. It’s because of him - and that sacred time - that I am now an end-of-life doula. I’ve done the training, I continue to learn, but nothing will ever teach me more than those last days by his side. Paul, my husband, my greatest teacher.

And for that, I’m deeply thankful.