31st January 2007 - Happy to see him

I didn't sleep well last night. I deliberately drank too much beer so I would fall asleep without the chance to think about what Dad said - or didn't say - and what I should or shouldn't do. The beer worked and I fell asleep but I woke fitfully through the night and woke up feeling crap. Woke up to the same feelings of not knowing what to do, of wanting to help him of wanting to make him feel better. Those and a mild hangover.

I wasn't sure about going in this morning, but had to. He wasn't in the day room, the smoking room or the first corridor I tried. I started to rush to find him - convincing myself he was hacking at his wrists with a butter knife somewhere. Of course he wasn't, he was sleeping in a chair. I was pleased to see him. An emotion I'm ashamed to say I'm not very familiar with.

When I talked to him about what he'd been trying to say yesterday, he said he didn't remember, so I said he'd seemed a bit down and asked if he felt better. He agreed that he did but I'd just railroaded him into saying it, and we both knew it.

We found a table in the day room and sat for tea and biscuits. Pink wafers. The polish domestic hoover round us constantly - there can't possibly have been any need for him to do it but he did. Philip and Fern where blasting out in one corner, Elvis doing the same from the other corner and in the centre was Tweedledum loudly holding court on the tedious minutiae of her previous evening. But I was pleased there was no way I could hear Dad, because I couldn't bear to hear anything more about suicide or try to pick together the fragments of a conversation to try and discern some meaning. So we played snap, Ellie, Dad and I. Dad didn't get the hang of it. His music has left him, his words are going fast and now he can't even play snap. Maybe I should buy him a knife.

I saw his named nurse on the way out and I thought about telling her about his depression and asking for the Dr to be called to prescribe an antidepressant, but I don't. If they take antidepressants if tends to make them sleepy during the day and restless at night so the staff try to avoid them. Nice.

Still, tomorrow is another day. That's suppose to make you feel better that saying isn't it. Doesn't seem to work for Dad. When I say I'll see him tomorrow, that tomorrow is another day, he said "That's the problem".

30th January 2007 - Did he just ask me to kill him?

I think Dad asked me to kill him today. He spent ages trying to tell me something. The usual background noise crashing through the foreground meant it was really really difficult to understand him. Ellie was singing too, firstly across the table from me, then on my knee when Toiletbrush Cecily approached her, with her hair suspiciously glisteny and her eyes fixed on Ellie's chocolate. By the time she reached our table, Ellie had scampered over to my knee and was asking for endless games of noughts and crosses. So I can't be sure of what Dad said. He definitely said he wanted to write a suicide letter. Firstly he said to his grandfather, but as he talked I got the impression he wanted to write it as a grandfather - to his grandchildren. And then he also definitely said he wanted to write a suicide letter to me and people like me - which I took to mean me and my siblings.

He then started on a fairly bad tempered ramble about being sick and tired. He wants me to know he's giving up. He's fed up with me turning up at the very last minute supposedly to save him and then doing nothing.

And I think he's thinking about slitting his wrists. He talked about a map with thin red roads and thicker blue roads and train tracks crossing over them. The road map he kept calling it but I think he was talking about his veins.

But I don't know, I can't be sure. It's probably all my interpretation of nothing. I'm projecting my interpretation onto things he's half saying or implying. It might mean nothing. Should I say something though? Or if he can do it and wants to should I do nothing and let him?

Fuck.

22nd January 2007 - Birthday cake

Ellie and I went in Monday morning, the day after her shared 3rd birthday party, with a big chunk of her cake. My friend Janey had had a cake made with an image of the 4 children inkjeted onto the icing. At the party we'd divided the cake four ways to allow each of the Mum's to take home the bit with their child's face on it, so I had a fairly sizable wedge of cake with Ellie's face on for us to share over the obligatory tea.

Dad seemed pleased to see us but completely bemused by the cake. He couldn't work out what it was or what to do with it. He didn't even seem able to focus on it. Maybe Ellie's fondant smile threw him, maybe he didn't expect a photo to be edible. When I took out three little candles, wedged them through her torso and lit them his aghast face looked at me as if I'd just performed some bizarre wicken ritual. So expecting him to eat it afterwards was perhaps ambitious.

The staff in the day room were all new to me but seemed to know some of the residents as they were discussing their favourites. I can't imagine why anyone would favour Bertha with her constant shouting, nor ToiletBrush Cecily and her glisteny hair, but two of the staff claim them as favourite. I felt a little disappointed none of them mention Dad, and then realised how ridiculous that is. Even I didn't favour him and he brought me up. It's only human nature - I told myself - to have favourites so I don't know why I find it so unpleasant that they were talking that way. Is it the dehumanisation of their subjects that bothered me? Is it the fact that they can find something likeable in people that I can only just manage to not be disgusted by? Is it that they obviously don't have the same fear of madness that I do? Whatever it is I did't like it and something registered in my face because one piped up "Course everyone loves Alan, don't they, eh Alan, we all love you" and they ruffle Dad's hair. He smoothed it down awkwardly - sometimes when he uses his hands it looks as if they've been detached and then reattached at a slight offset - and says "Glad to hear it". I did't know if I should have told him or them he's not Alan.

20th January 2007 - Ellie's three

It was Ellie's third birthday. My baby was 3. I couldn't believe how quickly those years went. Unfortunately I mentioned this at the home.

I went in that afternoon. Ellie was having a shared party the following day so we were having a relatively quiet day for the day of her birthday and I knew I wouldn't go in on the Sunday of the party.

He seemed pleased enough to see me, recognised me reasonably quickly as someone he knew and managed to walk to the day room for tea. "It's Ellie's birthday today Dad" I ventured "Imagine Ellie being 3, where has the time gone? These last three years have been so quick!". When I saw his face I realised Einstein was right, time is most definitely relative, not absolute, most definitely relative. What a totally dumbass thing to have said. The thoughts he was having must not have pleased him because he flickered out for a while and when he came back he'd lost the plot completely "Three, by jingo. I remember her as a kitten. So tiny. Should have been a boy though, never had much time for daughters". Didn't try and jigsaw that one together, I probably deserved a sideswipe for my thoughtlessness.

I tried a bit harder to communicate, feeling guilty. I had read about reminiscencing the previous night and how it was useful. I had noticed that he liked to talk about the past because those events were things he was fairly sure had happened, and made sense, he understood them at the time and if he could relay them properly he knew he'd be making sense. Trouble was, he was increasingly losing the cognitive skills to be able to relay the stories correctly. It was hard to tell if his memories were jumbled or just the translation in his head to words. I'd like to think the memories were still intact and that the translation was lost, but maybe that's just to make it easier for me to deal with.

So, I'd started a - pretty onesided - conversation about a holiday we'd had as a family in the really hot summer of 1976. He seemed to remember it and tried to join in but he seemed to have swapped out blocks of words for others. Caravan became monkey, ice cream became coal, tar melting became seaweed. He knew he was getting words wrong and was getting annoyed and frustrated with himself, and then annoyed with me for taking him down this depressing memory lane, crowded with jumbled images that he couldn't describe correctly.

"Go home to your family" he said fixing me with his clouded lustreless eye.
I wanted to say that he was my family and that I'd stay as long as he needed but I didn't, I kissed him, told him I wouldn't be able to see him the following day but had arranged for my brother and sister-in-law to go in to see him on the way to Ellie's birthday party. And I left.

As a healthy man he'd have hated a children's party. Growing up we'd never had one. He only really could cope with very small gatherings and with children in small numbers and at a distance. He'd have - even at his best - totally hated the party that we were having for Ellie. This is the man who once told me he liked working shifts because it meant he "didn't have to do all that family stuff". And who said that he didn't really like children, could only stand them in small doses - and chuckled that it included his own, leaving me in no doubt that he was serious. So, why did I feel guilty I wasn't turning myself upside down arranging a way to bring him to the party on Sunday?

I decided I'd visit on Monday and take in some cake and candles. We could have a little celebration then. I wondered if that would meet with approval. Probably not. Damned if you do, damned if you don't, feel shite if you do, feel shite if you don't. And whilst I wallow in self pity can I just remind myself he's the one losing himself in mind porridge - silly self indulgent bitch that I am.

14th January 2007 - I always knew she'd come to no good

Dad met me today with the news that "Jeannette's body has been found in a wheelie bin - murdered - been there for up to 16 weeks - a victim of the Suffolk ripper. Always knew she'd come to no good but didn't know she was on the game. Not surprised though."

Now, I know his thoughts are not his own and I know he's not able to express himself but I'd have hoped that he'd be at least a little sad at my death. I would also like to have thought that he didn't think I would end up on the game or that I'd come to no good.

Anyway, I convince him it is me, and that I'm not dead. He even appears to be convinced that I'm not a prostitute, so that's something. I suppose I'm too old to become a prostitute now even if I wanted to. If I ever hit rock bottom I'll have to think of another way out because I don't think even the most desperate would pay for it from me any more.

He wasn't relieved I wasn't dead, didn't hug me and say praise God for me being alive. But he wasn't disappointed, so that's something I suppose.