27 november

I am in my mid-forties. My parents are in their 80s. Last week, early on Sunday morning, my father had a stroke. I was visiting for the weekend and I found him on the floor of the bathroom – conscious and able to speak to me but with a distorted voice and gripped by a weakness that stopped him from standing or even moving his body into a more comfortable position. I called emergency services and the ambulance arrived. The paramedics spoke with my father, lifted him to his feet, took him from the house in a wheelchair. I was surprised at how long the ambulance stood outside the house, parked on a bend in a busy road - a place where no other vehicle could stop. They were there so long that I began to wonder if Dad  had died - why else would they act with such apparent lack of urgency? Eventually, though, they pulled away and the view from the window was normal once again. (I forget what the weather was like – grey, I think, but not raining.)

I went to talk to my mother. She has dementia and she hadn’t woken up. I suppose my father had tried to call out but he couldn’t raise his voice or make himself heard. It was a conscious decision to let her sleep through my father’s leaving. I was sure he wouldn’t die. She would see him again. And if she witnessed the paramedics taking him from the house, she would panic (I thought). It would all be much too disturbing. I wasn’t convinced of this then and I’m still not sure that I was right. Perhaps I am just a coward. (That seems quite possible.) Almost a week later I am still in my parents’ house, trying to help my mother through an experience that is tough enough for someone with all their faculties and particularly so for someone with dementia (especially when her son is an irritable bugger). She asks the same questions again and again. What is a stroke? What causes it? Is it something we’ve done? When will they let him go?

I have started to write a diary because it strikes me that even in the past week the picture has changed a number of times – first morning alone with my mother, first visit to the hospital, first conversation with social services, first estimate of how long my father will be away. I have become very conscious of this sense of a changing picture and, while I don’t have time to write very much, 300 words a day might help me to remember how it happened.

Enough for today. More tomorrow. Mum needs her tea and her first medication of the day.