You Can Say the Soul Has Gone, the Feelings Just Not There
Strokes are funny things you know. I suppose they affect people in different ways and generalisations can't be made about the likely outcome a few weeks down the line. However, having seen (and heard) my fair share of the poor buggers over the past few months, I can attest that some become angry and aggressive, some lose all control of various parts of their bodies and some just smile. It's looking like my Dad is reverting to a kind of child-like state. Hardly able to walk, he sits in his chair in the respite home and watches the world go by. Any attempts at conversation are met with a smile and a "yes" or "no". Anything that enters his vision is stared at.That was what he was like on Sunday afternoon when I went up to visit him. I was fast running out of things to say to him as nothing was coming back to me and it's hard holding a one-way conversation, you start to feel like you're the one with the problem. So, as the clock ticked away in the main recreation and relaxation area, our "conversation" slowly petered away. We sat for a while and I noticed his trousers were slipping down from his waist as he moved around in the chair. Too much weight loss and a finite supply of recent trousers y'see. Eventually I made to leave and asked him to stand while I pulled his pants up a bit. He did as he was asked and stood holding his zimmer frame. Not looking I put my hand round his back to grab the waistband and that's when I realised he'd soiled himself. I was initially appalled and told him to stay where he was until I could get a carer to come and help. He just said "OK" and stood there like a three-year-old. As I moved off I could see that his chair had suffered also. I couldn't believe it. In full view of patients and visitors.
The carers soon came and led him off to the toilet whereupon I told him I had to go. He just smiled and said "tara" as he was led off like a naughty schoolboy. The care staff were great and told me not to worry, they would deal with it and they were used to this kind of occurence.
What really, really got to me though was the fact that he obviously did not know what he'd done and he certainly didn't appear to be embarrassed by what he'd done.
My Dad would have been appalled, but this isn't my Dad. This is a strange approxiamation of my Dad. Bits of him are still recognisable but others are fading away. Will he ever come back or am I witnessing the slow, inexorable internal demolition of the man who gave me life?
I think we all know, but what would be the good in admitting it?
This evening - straight from work - I drove up to spend a few minutes with my Dad and to pick my Mam up to take her home after a hard-day's visiting. The sun was a powerful presence as we came down from the edge of the Saddleworth Moors to pass through Oldham on the way home.
Something far off kept glinting and annoying me. In the end as we neared Oldham I discovered that the glint was bouncing off a gaudy looking minaret on one of the local mosques. A quick perusal of the townscape below us soon revealed more mosques and a few churches. Religion on the march again.
It depresses me. I'm sick of it. I stopped listening to Radio 4 because of its obsession with the sodding Church of England, I'm often found dumbstruck staring at the TV while some fucking Priest, Imam, Vicar and the like spouts arrant nonsense (and is usually paid to do so), while an impotent interviewer has to act as though the basis of his right to spokesmanship ("I know what God meant") is truth.
When the time comes, the Humanist society will be contacted to organise a rational, freethinkers funeral. I know that's what my Dad will want.
Right, what else has been happening? Oh yes Beruit/Lebanon/Iran/Syria/Israel. When will we ever learn?
And Iraq? Civil war I call it just as I predicted a couple of years ago. Now George and Toneh might call it something else but I call it Civil War and it will get worse because the opposing sides are killing the others because, wait for it.......yes, you've got it, they have different RELIGIOUS beliefs. You couldn't make it up.
Cheeers Deities. You're great you are.
3 comments:
Your dad is lucky to have a son like you. Hold on to your memories of the father you knew and loved and let them guide you through this trying phase. There are many ways to die and your dad's path seems more torturous for his loved ones than it is for him. Hold his hand. Ramble about old times. Take him places while he is still able to go. Make sure that when the end comes - perhaps in a year, perhaps in ten - that you will be able to look back without regret upon the love and the care you gave even when he was changed from the man you knew. I am sorry if I sound like a religious nutter - I'm the opposite. Like you I looked into the abyss and saw nothing, no God, no religion, nothing - just people getting by.
Steve, like too many I suspect, I know what you're going through. My old man was a proud Coldstream Guard. paraded outside Buckingham Palace, all six foot two of him (plus the busby), wounded at dunkirk, then came back to fight the class war in the car factories. The last time I saw him in the home, when old timers disease had taken his mind and ravaged his body, I could have picked him up with one hand. He gave me a sweet and asked me to feed the dog - he meant the swing lid bin in the corner - and the biggest regret of my life so far was that I never kissed him before I left that day... we just disdn't bhave that sort of 'soppy' relationship... silly sod, I've started crying as I think of it. So, when you leave your Dad... every time, don't forget the hug and the kiss. It might not mean much to him, but it will to you.
As for the God Squad... it's all power. God (or whatever they call it) doesn't enter the equation, I suspect
I'm never any good at these bits. I think YP and Bob put it so well. Mrs TNR's mum had a stroke a few years ago, she's recovered, but you can see the toll it has taken in her both physically and mentally. She can still do a lot for herself, but the memory is certainly fading. She'll tell the same stories of a bygone era time and time again, daily in fact, to thewife. But we listen and join in again and again because for now we still can.
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