The Healing Game

Fifteen minutes after arriving back in Kingston I have to help my father out of his bed onto a commode. There are few greater levellers in life than having to help your semi-dressed father out of bed to have a shit. He is faced with recognising that he has to let go of some of his pride and independence – and I with the recognition of having to let to go of some of my resentment for support that I felt was never offered. We had kind of got to this position when I was here last week. In a moving moment he apologized for not having always having been the father that he might have been. And I apologized for not having respecting him enough as a son. We held hands on several occasions in an intimacy we had never shared before. Sometime during the week I even made him laugh- a rare and memorable occasion. Some kind of healing of wounds is happening -no matter how difficult the circumstances or how great the personal cost feels at the present time.

The next day R is discharged from hospital –his first day home after whatever it was that prompted his crisis. He has been going downhill slowly for a long time and I’ve known that - but also seen that he was unwilling to accept any offers of help. He was coping with the day to day things – cooking washing etc and therefore felt he was doing OK – but the longer term things – like paying the bills on time or cleaning the kitchen or toilet had escaped him. Last week when I was here I spent most my time cleaning, filing his bills and accounts and throwing away things that were hopelessly broken, beyond repair or cleaning. I tried to do it with sensitivity aware of his pre-war training against throwing anything away “that might come in useful one day”.

The immediate challenge now he is home is to get him used to being there again, being comfortable with having carers come to visit three times a day to do his medication, and check he’s coping with dressing, undressing, washing cooking and whatever. So far he is doing quite well. He appreciates his flat is cleaner (man I even put the curtains through the wash), likes the flowers on the table, thinks the first carer is a good woman. He manages to make his breakfast, and a sandwich in the evening and gets a hot meal at lunchtime. He also worries about the cost of having care, but I try to reassure him that he has been putting aside for a rainy day all his life and this is the rainy day and he needs to let go of those recession-born worries of the ‘30s and the constant strife to be independent – in short to accept that he deserves being cared for now in his old age.

Hopefully in another week’s time I can get R confident about living at home with support- about accepting the support of strangers- and get the legal issues about finances and power of attorney /deputy sorted. It’s been a hard 2-3 weeks but equally a period that has shown me how much I have grown in confidence and capacity over the last five years or so.

As a little candle on this cake I get a completely unexpected email from a friend who I haven’t seen for 8-9 years, who is now an MP, saying "if you are ever in London come and visit me in Parliament". “As a matter of fact I am here right now”- And I get an invite to go to a private reception on the riverside terrace of the House of Commons the same evening- walking in and under the corridors of power and boogying on the banks of the Thames, under the shadow of Big Ben to “Won’t you take me to funky town?” Do I dream the script of my life or is it written in the stars?