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".