Friday 13th October 2006 – Not so much Friday 13th more Nightmare on Old Street

When Ellie and I arrived, Dad was sitting in the sunny bit of the day room but as there was nowhere for us to sit with him I suggested we move to a table, then Ellie would be able to draw and we could all sit together. Dad agreed but obviously didn’t know what he’d agreed to because he didn’t move. After repeating and explaining and cajoling several times, I gave in, took Ellie over to a table and tucked her chair in, then went back to try and persuade my Dad over to join us. He just couldn’t grasp what I was saying, so I eventually just manhandled him onto his feet and pointed him in the right direction, then he shuffled obligingly after me.

I tried asking him how he was feeling. He was trying to tell me about a pain he was having and about why he’d been so down the previous evening. It was like a physical pain for both of us to try and get the words out of him, he’d start to try and think of a word, get frustrated, say the wrong word, get angry with himself, then flicker off to unconsciousness briefly, then fight and pull himself back to the living world with a word, any word, grasped in his jaws like a prized catch from the sea depth of his mind. It’s so difficult when he’s like this not to try and suggest words, but often when you do it’s your words and nothing like what he’s trying to say. It’s so frustrating, you want to scream, you want to shout, and I get grumpy.

Cecily came over to the table and pulled up a chair. She often seems to think Dad is her husband, and that Ellie is her daughter or at least someone she’s attached to, someone she knows. Today was such a time. She was telling Ellie that she’d get her a doll for Christmas, asking her to come to her house, took a drink from Ellie’s bottle, asked her for some of her chocolate and kept touching her hair. Then started to rummage around in her clothing, and eventually pulled out some folded and scrunched up tissues. She started to unfold and smooth them, and hand then across the table to Ellie. I noticed just in time that they were wads of used toilet roll. I pushed them across the table at her and asked her not to give Ellie anything, that I was trying to teach her not to take things from people she doesn’t know. I should have thought it through though, because as she was of a mind that Ellie was her daughter being told she was a stranger didn’t go down too well. She became very vocal, telling me I was a bastard and I should fuck off, no-one wanted my type here anyway and forcing the shitty paper back across the table towards Ellie, who was bewildered, Dad was oblivious and trying to pick something from his sleeve that wasn’t there and not noticing the drool that snaked from the corner of his mouth dripping off his chin. In the background Bertha was screaming for her Mammy again, the TV was blaring Philip and Fern and then a carer put on Daniel O’Donnell. My mind was an Edvard Munch. I ask Cecily to go and talk to someone else. I’m not rude but I’m far from pleasant. I’m not ‘nice’.

Dad was hitching his trousers round his fly area so I asked him if he wanted the toilet, and he confirmed that he needed the little toilet, but the big toilet too. “Look at him, feeling his wullie, and you want me to go away, ya snobby bitch” Cecily spat as she wander away. When I take him to the toilet, he asks if this one will accommodate both or does he have to find another for the heavies. I kiss his cheek, tell him it’ll be fine and I’ll see him tomorrow. I leave with his drool on my face and feeling so small, so unpleasant, so disappointed with myself for not being kind.