31st October 2006 – Happy Halloween

Last Halloween I didn’t think I’d be going to another Halloween Party at the home. Well, we went, Ellie, Mark and I. Ellie was a cat, Mark was a ghostie spectre kind of thing, or at least he would have been if Ellie had been able to cope with him wearing his mask. She couldn’t, crying and screaming when he tried, so poor Mark went dressed as a 9 year old boy in a white dress. Scary enough I suppose. I was dressed as a witch – bit of typecasting there, wicked old woman that I am.

When we arrived all the residents were sat round the walls of the day room. The room was decorated with orange and black balloons. Most of the staff had costumes on or at least a witches hat. The food table was laden with sandwiches, cold little pizzas, cocktail sausages, mini quiches and the like. When I found Dad he was sitting, rather dishevelled with a plate of party food and a sherry glass full of diluting orange in front of him. He said hello to me and Ellie – he didn’t recognise Mark - and started telling me how he’d been asked to fix the boiler for the place that morning, but when he opened up the cupboard all there was in it was a black man lifting an old buddie onto the toilet. It made me remember asking him – two days after I’d got married – how he’d enjoyed my wedding. He’d said that it had been ok but he didn’t think much of the entertainment. As he’d not been present at the ‘party’ bit of the wedding, only the ceremony and meal and therefore not around for any entertainment, I asked him what he meant. He huffed and puffed and blustered and said with his high pitched indignant voice “I can only describe it as men and women going to the toilet together.” I wasn’t sure whether I was more surprised that he thought I’d think that that was suitable entertainment to have at my wedding or the fact that he couldn’t work out that he’d gone into the ladies by mistake. I suspect he may have had a boiler room/toilet mix up this morning.

I encourage him to eat his food, ignoring the memory of Bruce pissing all over the food last year, I ask Mark to go and get some things for him and Ellie to eat. In typical boy fashion he comes back with 3 cocktail sausages, and a mound of chocolate dipped marshmallows. I look at Dad, he’s wearing a pair of trousers that don’t belong to him, that he needs to hold up they are so big. He’s got braces on but one of the fastenings is broken so he’s holding it onto his trousers, flies open. This seems to be stopping him eating because he thinks his trousers will fall down if he lets go, even though he’s seated. I get a carer to give me a key and I run off to his room to look for a belt. I can’t find one, but looking through all his stuff without him there really freaks me out. His outside clothes are all stuffed into a high cupboard – his jackets and coats. His lower drawer is full of incontinence pads for him and plastic gloves and aprons for the carers to help change him. There’s a drawer full of ties, he always wore a tie when he was himself, a tie, long sleeved shirt with a pen in the pocket, that was Dad. He once went on a TV quiz show, 15-1 it was called. He came second, but my abiding memory of that show was of him, white shirted, wearing a tartan tie and a pen in his pocket. He’d applied to go on the show before Mum died and they were planning to go down to the filming together, make a wee break of it. But then she died. He must have had to phone up and explain and cancel. He then reapplied a few months later. It must have felt so lonely going on his own, no-one in the audience to congratulate him or talk about the show on the journey home. I took the afternoon off work to go home and watch him on the TV. It would never have occurred to him to ask me to go with him. I wonder if I’d have gone if he’d have asked. I’m pretty sure I would have. But if that's not a metaphor for my dysfunctional life I don't know what is - Dad on the TV feeling alone and lost and me at home alone watching the TV cheering him on.

Anyway, I return to the party room, give the key back and tell Dad I couldn’t find a belt, that I’ll buy him another one the next day. I wonder why whoever helped him dress didn’t put him in trousers that fitted him. There had been at least 3 pairs in his wardrobe. I suppose once he’d got them on it was too much effort to get him to change them, so they’d let him shuffle around all day. I ask him if he wants to change his trousers for a pair that don’t need braces, but he can’t understand what I mean. He looks at me aghast, with total horror and disbelief so I’m not sure what he thought I was suggesting – after all I’m the type that thinks men and women going to the toilet together is suitable entertainment for a wedding you know.

All the children at the party are bored. There is nothing for them to do. There’s no entertainment, no dooking for apples, no pin the nose on the witch, no nothing. They are expected just to sit and eat. Here they are, dressed for Halloween, having been told they were going to a party, being forced to sit in a room with a bunch of old folk being fed party snacks. I tell Mark and Ellie they can play chases if they like in the corridors – every resident is in the day room so I reckon that’ll be safe enough.

We stay for an hour. As I leave I see Dad downing a scooner of sherry, upturning the glass and placing it on the table in front of him, like a shot drinker lining them up, he goes for Dollies, as she’s sat beside him, she’s incapable of moving and not surprisingly the plate of party food and her sherry is untouched – and will be until a carers makes it round the room to her to help her eat. I want to tell him he doesn’t like sherry, but then I think a wee alcoholic glow might be just the thing to take the edge off and let him go on a shuffling search for more glasses to drain and upturn. Go on yourself Jimmy. Happy Halloween.