Victor Coombes RIP

I don't know why it occurred to me to write about death in my last blog, but by one of those coincidences that makes human life so special sometimes, within four hours of my posting it my father-in-law was dead.

I believe he probably suffered what is known in the trade as a "silent coronary". This is when, instead of the usual dramatic collapse with agonising chest pain that characterises a typical heart attack, in older people, sometimes the only sign that something has gone wrong is that they take a rapid and hard to explain decline: they become weak and breathless. And they don't usually live very long after such a reverse. And this what appears to have happened to Victor. My wife had seen him the previous day and reported his parlous state. The home decided to call the doctor to visit him the following day, and she very kindly phoned me to give me her opinion. She agreed  that a silent coronary was on the cards, but that in view of his age (he was 87) and his severe Alzheimer's, it would be unwise to subject him to the traumas of hospital admission. Not that even the world's best hospital could have done much for him if that had been the case.

So we have lost him, a man of infinite pep and optimistic energy, who could give me good run for my money on the table-tennis table even though he was 25 years my senior, a man who would put himself out for others without a second thought, a man who literally did not have an ounce of malice in him. And although in his latter years andas his memory loss kicked in he began to indulge in increasingly bizarre and sometimes irritating behaviour, he remained loved by all: by his family, friends, neighbours and his fellow parishioners at his beloved church, and even by the hard-headed staff at his old people's home.

An unsung hero; a hero of our time in a small, but very real way.

I'm gonna miss you, Vic