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My brother speaks as if Dad is in swift decline. We talk about whether or not it is better for him to go quickly, not having to endure a hideous death, the hospitals and busybodies milling all around him. He hates it. Yesterday, my brother had warned him that he'd have to go back if he didn't eat and Dad looked him in the eye and told him he had no idea how horrible his experience on that ward had been. Now he's back there again, readmitted after his chemo pre-assessment when they decided he was too sick to be at home. They hadn't realised he lived alone, even though it was written in BLOCK CAPITALS on the front page of his file. The consultant in the acute unit had shown me himself.
'But if you were here, you'd just be getting annoyed with him. He won't eat. Yesterday I sat by his bed for an hour and a half trying to get him to eat some soup and he wouldn't. Afterwards I switched off all the lights and locked the door. He can't look after himself.'
I don't know what to do for the best. Here I am, at home in London, feeling so far away, knowing that if I was there I'd be hanging about in someone else's home, someone else's life, waiting for visiting hours, waiting for news, worrying about pressurizing my dad with too much fuss, worrying about not being there when he needs us. My brother tells me that I should talk to the doctors, 'you know what to say, what questions to ask.' I am appalled at the lack of information, the not-knowing, the impossibility of understanding what the right thing is to do when you don't know what it is you are facing. What are the scenarios? What can we expect? Why the hell has no one told us these things? I speak to a good friend on the phone, she tells me that she feels the same, her Grandpa in and out of hospital with dementia.
I will go tomorrow night after work. Mum tells me she feels pulled in so many directions. 'I've got to keep him sweet,' she says of her husband, a belligerent asshole whom we all dislike. My brother tells me he thinks she still holds a flame for dad. I wonder if that's just his fantasy. I wonder if mum just feels guilt. She left him after all, said the other day she should've stopped him drinking when there was still a chance. I phone Gran, she wishes there was something she could do. I tell her to give Mum love and support, be there for her, let her cry down the phone. 'She's putting on a brave face for us, you know.' She tells me Dad should go into a hospice. I say he's not there yet, please - let's take it one step at a time.