All your words are so touching. Emma, I'm very sorry you're going through a difficult loss too 
. It's so strange to hear stories of relatives coming to fetch loved ones - I wonder if that really could have been what he meant on Saturday, although he was still lucid and walking then.
I hope with every bit of me that he did hear us - if he did he will know how much we loved and wanted him - although I hope and pray he knew that anyway. I had a nurse friend round today who said that our hearing is the last sense to go - don't know if she was just trying to be reassuring.
At one point in the early hours - I forget exactly when - I think it was after he'd been ventilated but a couple of hours before he went - his eyes were half open. I was looking into them, and they suddenly got watery and what I thought was a tear slipped out. I wonder if that could have been the moment his sub-conscious gave up? Although, tbh I think he lost lucidity a long time before then so maybe just wishful thinking on my part.
Most of his treatment for the last 20 odd years was at a hospital about an hour away, and many of the staff there knew him. The hospital he died at yesterday was closer - we ended up there because when I spoke to a doctor at his usual hospital on Sunday, he said that dh didn't sound well enough to make the journey there and that I should call an ambulance. So he died somewhere he didn't know very well, and where he wasn't known - that is troubling me. Keep thinking they might have saved him at the usual place if we'd gone there. When we went there today to pick up the medical certificate, it near enough broke my heart to think him of lying somewhere in that big ugly building, and when we left I felt we were abandoning him in a strange place :(
Show I have asked his consultant of 20 plus years to speak to the ITU docs in the hospital he died - he is happy to do that for dh, and will be in touch with me as soon as he has any info. So thank you for your post.
Feeling very very sad tonight, just can't grasp this. This time a week ago, dd turned 22 and we were all out for dinner. Wish I'd known it wasn't a normal week, and was in fact his last week, and our last week together. I want to remember every mundane detail and every normal conversation we've had over the past week. Need to remember the little details of our very ordinary life, not just the big moments.
Many apologies for epic post and maudlin sentiments. It is ridiculously comforting spewing things out here and reading your posts. Trying to hold it together for the dc (not succeeding all that well - they are being incredible) but I can let go a bit here.