St Columba's Hospice Appeal: Father died holding his daughter's hand

Published on Tuesday 1 June 2010 09:44

LIKE any eight-year-old girl, Jade Finlayson was delighted to see her doting dad on her birthday.

There were piles of presents, jelly and ice cream and the obligatory candles on the cake.

But Jade and her dad Joe were celebrating together against the odds: the party was taking place at Joe's bedside at St Columba's Hospice, and just a week later, he would die there – with Jade holding his hand.

It is a heartbreaking memory for Jade and her family, but now, three years on, they talk easily about those events. Despite losing Joe to a brain tumour at just 35, they are obviously buoyed by their recollections of all the happy times they spent together, rather than broken by sadness.

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As the family gathers at the hospice today, they seem positively happy to be back. Jade remembers the blue flowery cow statue in the garden, and as the grown-ups chat about her dad, plays nearby with her 22-month-old cousin Aidan.

The lightness in their voices is a sure sign of their positive outlook, something they put down to Joe himself, who took his illness completely in his stride.

A fit and healthy taekwondo instructor, living in Easter Road, Joe Hepburn was the last person anyone expected to get ill.

But his mental and physical strength stood him in good stead when the double vision and tiredness he had suffered for a year suddenly got worse and he developed a squint in one eye.

His brother James, 39, a retail supervisor, recalls the day in March 2005 that Joe went back to the doctor and was sent straight to hospital: "I'll never forget because it was my first day on my new job. We were going to go to see Chicago at the Playhouse and we were really excited about me having my new job. I got home from work and my wife's mum was at the doorstep saying, 'Joe's been taken to hospital.' We'd known he wasn't well, but it was still a shock."

Joe had exploratory surgery, and a week later came the news that he had an aggressive brain tumour, "as bad as it can be", James says.

"He'd had a chat with the doctors and they were kind of soft-shoeing it and he said, 'Just tell me, is it a tumour?' and they said, 'Yes, it is.'"

He was given between eight and 16 months to live, but as soon as he had recovered from the operation, went back to his job as a draughtsman.

"Joe's philosophy was, 'I'm not trying to read into why it's happened to me, it has happened to me, it happens to a lot of people.' I think that's because his mind was so disciplined with the taekwondo," James says.

"I never once saw him shed a tear – he used to say to us, 'You're the guys that are going to have to carry on.' We all knew what was going to happen, and he said we just have to prepare for it and live life the best we can until it happens."

So that's what they did. Joe had separated from Jade's mum Cath several years earlier, but they remained friends and shared childcare. Joe would go for regular scans, and James says: "Sometimes the tumour had totally disappeared and other times it would have grown hugely – they would say, 'How are you still here? It looks so bad, there's no way you should be walking and talking.'"

With chemotherapy and radiotherapy to slow the tumour's growth, he outlived first the eight-month prognosis, and then the 16 months. Then, over the space of a week in April 2007, Joe went blind. It was a blow, but he was determined to attend his sister-in-law Lynette's wedding in Grimsby that May.

James says: "He'd said two years before, when he was diagnosed, 'No matter what happens I'm going to make it.'"

"He was starting to have problems moving his limbs, but he didn't want to tell us. He was numb down one side of his face, but it wasn't until the wedding meal I saw him struggling to eat and realised.

"We had a wheelchair, but he stood for the ceremony, and the photographs, which was incredible."

At the end of the trip, instead of taking Joe home, James phoned the Western General and said they were bringing him in. After two nights he was transferred to St Columba's, not far from the West Granton Road home where the brothers had grown up.

James says: "Everyone from the people on reception to the nurses – everyone was wonderful."

James could see that time was short for his brother. But one person was rooting for him to last just a little longer.

On 20 June, three weeks after Joe was admitted, Jade was due to turn eight, and she wanted him there.

"I thought it would be one or two weeks he would be here. But the milestones kept on happening," James says. "He made Father's Day – and then he made Jade's birthday."

Jade, who bears a remarkable resemblance to her dad, smiles shyly as she remembers the day: "We came in, and we were sitting beside dad and all the nurses came in with a cake and lots of candles and lots of family were there, and the nurses got some presents that they said were from dad – it was a happy day, not a sad one."

Among the gifts was one present brought in by a relative, which Jade still treasures – a teddy bear with a recordable voice message. Despite struggling to speak, Joe recorded a message – "Happy birthday Jade, I love you."

After Jade's birthday, she continued to visit him every day after school. But Joe grew increasingly sleepy and found it harder to respond when his family came into the room.

On 27 June, they were summoned to St Columba's one last time. Cath found herself facing a huge decision – should they leave Jade with the nurses, or take her in as her father died?

She recalls: "I spoke to the nurses and it was a split-second decision, are we doing the right thing or doing the wrong thing – and she was holding her dad's hand when he died. Jade was handing out tissues, she coped better than the rest of us."

James says: "We were all round the bed, his breathing was quite laboured and then it softened and he just slipped away. I was in the family room after and Jade said, 'Daddy's gone to the angels today,' and I just broke down."

Looking back, Cath is certain they made the right choice to let Jade share that moment. And Jade agrees. Asked about her mum's decision, she says simply: "I think that it was better that I was there holding his hand when he died, rather than that I wasn't there in case I got too upset."