by Alan Watkins - Medway Messenger Codger's Club

To most people she was Pat. To Frank, her husband, she was Trish.

But to the hospital authorities, particularly nurses recently out of school, she was Patricia because that was what was on her birth certificate, and on her medical records.

Pat was 89. Such familiarity did not sit easy on her ears. Some would agree that it was unwanted familiarity.

She was not perfect. She didn’t care who knew her prejudices, or tolerate anyone whose views opposed hers.

Even in her frailest moments she had a streak of determination. There was strength and stubbornness in abundance. Again, that didn’t sit well with some of the nursing staff who had a power over her that no one had since she was a baby.

Pat had lost her hearing, couldn’t tolerate the aids she had bought and was rapidly going blind. Probably she went totally blind last year. She wouldn’t admit to her frailties, however.

She had a tough upbringing – the sort that nowadays would have had the social service teams poking in their noses (and quite rightly).

At school she was immensely popular. She was a sports fanatic. She was elected school captain – only for the headmistress to veto it because she was also the ringleader of mischief among her peers.

The Second World War was a time when boys would be boys and girls would have a good time.

There was the American pilot who flew an Anson aircraft down her street, and twice asked her to marry him (she refused and sometimes regretted lost opportunities).

There were dances at the town hall and at the Cadena. But she had fallen for her elder sister’s new boyfriend.

She told their mother she intended to marry him and, once the Second World War was over, she duly tied the knot with her poet soldier Frank.

He was an accountant because he was good at maths. He was staid, upright, sober and totally lacking in ambition.

The drive in her family came from Pat, not Frank. She was the car driver, too. He never got behind the wheel.

They had two sons, who married and moved away.

After Frank died in his mid-seventies, Pat decided their purchased council house was too big to manage on her own. She bought a bungalow away from the estate where they both had lived for nearly half a century. It was also away from her friends.

In recent years she developed cancer. It was sliced and shaved away by surgeons as they strived to keep her alive. Instead, increasingly faced with pain and discomfort, embarrassment and loneliness, she craved death. And she was quite certain she did not want to return to hospital.

She didn’t get either wish. Each time she rallied.

Then in December she was taken in following another bedroom fall. She was more alert than at any time in the past five years, however. The hospital didn’t help her: with no warning they moved her out of the ward into a holding area and then an ambulance arrived to take her home. It was a week before Christmas.

Her family was not told, there was no food in the house and carers were unaware. The ambulance crew helped her out of bed and made her walk to the front door.

In a spark of her old self, she insisted they saw her into bed.

On Christmas morning a neighbour rang her younger son to say he thought she should be back in hospital.

Discussions between the brothers followed and it was agreed that it was her so often repeated wish to stay at home – the NHS could finally come to her.

At 2pm, her younger son and his wife arrived from their home 20 miles away. Pat was in bed. She was warm but neither breathing nor showing any pulse.

He rang his brother 175 miles away.

"Mum’s gone," he said. "She’s dead."

The carers hadn’t been. The NHS also stayed away.

Pat could be infuriating, wonderful, irrational, kindly, totally giving, entirely selfish, a fund of fascinating stories, a lover of the countryside and a frustrated caravanner without her Frank.

Now they’re both gone.

My family is delighted that her suffering is finally over. We are equally pleased she beat the NHS. She died where she wanted – at home, peacefully, without more needles and knives.

Yesterday, we bade her farewell.

Sleep well, Mum.