13th September 2007 - Your Dad's bigger than my Dad

When did Dad become so small? He looks so fragile. He is so fragile, in so many ways, but so relentlessly, pointlessly robust in others. His eyes are sunken, his cheeks too. The whites of his eyes are snaked with red, clumpily cloudy, and his once rich, Cadbury velvety brown irises, ringed with milky blue. And his teeth seem blackened too - but maybe that's a side effect of his anitbiotics. I must remember to ask Karen next time I see her. He used to have lovely eyes, now I think of it. He always wore glasses, NHS ones at that, and he was never seen without them. His eyelashes were like a cow's,or giraffe's, or llama's - or any other animal that has straight eyelashes really. I suppose he would have been quite a handsome man had it not been for his skin, which was always a problem.

Immediately you see him now, you feel sorry for him. He shuffles, staggers, and slumps. I remember the first time I really felt deeply sorry for him. I was in my sister's house and I was trying to persuade him to come back to live in a care home. I had to tell him he had multi-infarct dementia. Moira, Colin and, to some extent, I had decided he should be told. I wasn't really convinced he should know, but I've never been very good at standing my ground, I usually assume that I'm wrong, that everyone else's opinion is more valid than mine. I told him about the tiny strokes he was having in his brain, that he needed help in day to day living and that he couldn't live alone anymore. He took in all in, he tried to keep himself together. His eyes - much brighter then - filled with tears but they didn't spill. Mine did, although I desperately tried not to let him see them. I didn't want him to know how serious it was, how awful his future was, but I need him to know it was something we couldn't ignore. Moira joined in and Dad listened more to her, and took it in better. Poor Dad. He tried, quite understandably, to come up with alternatives, but we didn't have any. I spend hours looking back, thinking what we could and should have done differently, how we could have prolonged his quality time. Horrible thing hindsight.