by Grace Dent
Dad’s behaviour is becoming quite frightening. He makes wild, paranoid accusations that we’ve stolen his belongings. We have killed his cat. We are all in a conspiracy against him. Sometimes he is blunt and really quite cutting, bringing up my appearance, my lack of children, my failed marriage. He says that there’s something wrong with my head. I feign deafness or simply laugh, but later hide in my bedroom and cry angrily. How bloody dare he? I think. He had five kids. Me and Dave are the only ones still here. What if I leave too? The following morning Dad is soft and sweet once more. I’m reminded that I love him again.
After several more months in a haze of guilt and sadness, David and I sneak out for thirty minutes alone in a local pub. We’re exhausted. For a fortnight we’ve watched Mam struggle on, recovering from her latest chemo injections, which we hope will halt the spread in her brain and bone. Mam needs sleep and silence, but Dad’s is up all night, shouting and pacing. We make a pact to find someone who’ll listen to us about Dad. A social worker, a doctor, someone. Every option we think of seems frightening. But we have to do it. Even if this means letting outsiders come into the bungalow, snooping about and judging us for our failings. Even if we have to try and sort out legal power of attorney over Dad’s medical choices, which we’ve read will cost £700 pounds in solicitor’s fees. We have to do these things, even if we both know that by doing them we are setting the ball rolling to splitting us up as a family. We go back and forth endlessly between the pros and cons of keeping us all together or giving Mam a fighting chance of survival by splitting us up. Both choices are terrible. I cry into a warm, stale glass of pub Pinot Grigio and David necks his pint. He sticks his enormous arm around me and says, ‘It’ll be right, we can sort this out.’ His face looks unsure.
We make numerous phone calls and leave messages on answer machines, and eventually a social worker arrives at the bungalow. Her policy seems to be not to talk to us. Dad must explain for himself what’s happening over an informal cup of tea. But the only reliable faculty Dad has left is being able to hide his madness when strangers appear. He softens his face and smiles and answers all her questions very vaguely.
The lady goes away quite happily, telling us she’ll write a report.
Each time we make a small step towards getting a diagnosis, we have a setback and then, as a family, we lose heart in pushing for the truth.
‘I think she’s right. I think he is more or less fine,’ says Mam.
‘Sometimes I don’t think it is as bad as he is making out,’ says Dave.
And then we are back to square one.
April 2017
I’m roasting a chicken for tea and Dad is helping, because nothing goes on in this house that he doesn’t have his nose in. Any rustling of supermarket carrier bags, any raised voices, any arrival through the door in our bungalow in Keswick.
We walk around the tiny Co-op sometimes, me and him, down the aisle together. I never let the trolley, with his small hands attached, out of my sight.
I might only need bits. Dave waits outside for us. We just go there to get out of the house.
‘Whoopsies!’ he’ll say, pointing at a cheap apple pie, reduced from a pound to twelve pence.
‘Whoopsies!’ I’ll laugh and stick it in our trolley.
As lots of the things I loved about my family dissolved or grew frightening, a trip to the supermarket became one of the only things we had left.
I steam some broccoli and add plenty of butter. I shake parboiled potatoes in flour then oil and chuck them in a very hot oven. All Dad’s really bothered about is pudding. Or, better still, a bar of chocolate at the end. I will never see Cadbury’s chocolate without thinking of my father. Cadbury’s purple is love. Cadbury’s purple is us toddling slowly back from the NAAFI shop before he left the forces. And now, in 2017, Cadbury’s is one of the only things I can ever guarantee he will eat.
As I pierce the chicken’s skin to see if the juice is clear, Dad hangs about by the hob. His blue, inky tattoo sags on his lower right arm because his flesh doesn’t fit his body anymore.
I never did get him to answer questions about it. Now I never will. Meanwhile, his questioning of me is constant. The same questions over and over again.
Do I know where his razor is?
Has Mam told me where she put his razors?
It is one of his recurring themes.
‘Mind what yer doin’. Yer don’t wannalerritburn,’ he says as I scrape the pan and make gravy.
‘I’m not lerrin’ it burn,’ I say, my accent still riven with his Merseyside tones. Eventually he loses interest and walks off. The Wi-Fi in the bungalow is so unreliable that I have taken to listening to BBC Radio Cumbria on Dad’s wireless, which plays a heady mix of Perry Como classics and memories of the Dalemain Marmalade Festival. I wonder what is happening in London. Rush hour, fancy launches, restaurants opening their doors for the evening’s service. I’d rather be here; carving the chicken, mashing potatoes, laying roasties in a large bowl beside the buttered broccoli and carrots. I lay everything out on the side in pans so my family can assemble in an orderly queue and serve themselves. Dad can no longer go to Toby’s, as he would find it too frightening. So now I make it come to him.
‘Tea is rrrrrready!’ I shout like a foghorn. I’ve given up calling it dinner.
Mam appears looking pale. Her long blonde hair is now very short and silver. Her pills make her stable but suppress her pleasure in eating. Feeding her meals that she can enjoy is one of my greatest joys. I even love it when she revolts at my attempt to feed her more ambitious things, like couscous, which ‘tastes like the bottom of a parrot cage’. Or tofu, which is ‘deep fried sanitary pad’. Mam’s fighting spirit is in there somewhere. The pilot light is still flickering. I’m on much safer ground if I make a roast dinner.
‘Ooh lovely,’ she says. ‘Chicken.’
‘Get in the queue, you,’ I say. ‘Typical bloody pensioner.’
She laughs and pinches a small, crispy roast potato.
Dad appears and tells me he is not hungry, but I hand him a plate anyway and let him come to the front of the queue.
iPhone note: Things Dad will eat if I am not there.
White toast with butter and cheap marmalade.
He likes a soft, fresh brown roll with a bit of something on it. You need to underplay it when you describe it. Do not call it a cheese roll. Or a ham roll. Call it a small roll with a little bit of cheese.
Toast with strong spready cheese.
Three fish fingers, a little bit of tartare sauce, no bread.
Smoked mackerel flaked on toast with a blob of mayo.
A mild chicken curry ready-meal with rice (don’t bother with naan bread or anything).
Two sausages with a fried egg (or don’t bother with the egg) and ketchup.
Sliced corned beef on a roll with a bit of ketchup.
Chunky veg soup that comes in a plastic carton. Serve him half. No bread.
Tins of Scotch broth soup. He will send back all the bits.
Breaded cod and about eight oven chips. Salt, vinegar, tartare sauce.
A boiled egg (no bread).
Choc-ice, like a Magnum Mini.
Glass of Merlot with dinner. He will find any bottle of port.
October 2017
‘Can I pencil you in for twenty-second of November for MasterChef? It’s you, Jay Rayner and Tom Parker Bowles. Can you be in London for then? Congratulations on the new job by the way! This is huge!’ says Vanessa, my TV agent. I am outside the front door of the bungalow, looking across at Latrigg Fell, trying to let Mam sleep. She is zapped on injections and strong pills. Dad is asleep too. Or at least I thought he was.
Inside the hallway I can hear a clattering. A drawer opening and closing.
‘Thank you,’ I say quietly, as I’ve not told anyone up north yet. Saying yes to it was ludicrous. ‘
Hang on, Vanessa – Dad, what do you need?’
I’ve found Dad’s wandering stage the hardest.
First you hear a rustle. Then the familiar sounds of someone searching for something. Kitchen cupboards open, then close again. Drawers creak open, back and forth, and then the footsteps head back to the bedroom and back to the corridor, wandering between the lounge and the kitchen.
Rooting through the phone table’s drawer. Things being overturned again and again in the drawer. And then silence. And then five minutes later the whole routine happens again from the start.
‘What have you lost, Dad?’ I say. Dad is examining pens, some old receipts, an old phone cable, and putting them back in the drawer again.
Sometimes Dad is very annoyed about this missing item. Sometimes he’s quiet. But it’s always the same item. His razor.
‘Mam brought me a razor home from shopping,’ he says. ‘Have you seen it?’
‘OK,’ I say. ‘Do you think it’s in the drawer?’
His expression looks wary, like I am trying to trick him.
‘I – well, I dunno,’ he says. ‘I’m lookin’ for it.’
We have bought Dad two different electric razors. We find them broken up into pieces; the cogs, the batteries, the innards all taken out and unravelled.
As my father’s translator-in-chief, my guess is he can feel the hair growing on his face, which makes him want to shave. However, when he is faced with the mirror he doesn’t recognise himself or grasp what needs to be done. If me or Dave try to shave him ourselves, he becomes angry. If Dave takes him to the barber, we have to pretend that it is perfectly normal to be taken there like a child, but we have no idea how he will react, once he’s there.
And then the hair grows back in a couple of days anyhow, and the pattern begins again. Searching.
‘Dad,’ I say, ‘give me a minute. I’ll look for it. Sit down, I’ll make you a cup of tea.’
Sometimes distraction with tea or cake works.
Up and down the corridor he walks, up and down, looking. Overturning boots in the shoe rack and looking behind coats and opening and closing that same drawer.
‘Dave bought me a new razor yesterday,’ he says again.
Sometimes he sounds so convincing.
And this is possible.
We are all so tired and no longer relaying information to each other. We are all becoming mad. Mam hasn’t slept properly for weeks. Dad will not let her out of his sight. If I separate him from her, he asks again and again where Mam has gone. When he wakes in the night to wander around, he wants Mam to be awake too.
Then, one morning, in the midst of the madness, a job offer. The Guardian newspaper wonder if I’d consider the role of restaurant critic; not merely reviewing in London, but right across the British Isles. Fifty-two columns per year, plus Christmas holiday specials. I can write about Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, Northern Ireland, wherever I want, sometimes even in Europe. The online site is read widely in America and Australia. I read the email quietly at 5 a.m. while drinking Gold Blend on the bungalow step. Even considering this offer feels selfish. I’d need to be away more. But these jobs come up very rarely. How can I possibly say no?’
November 2017
Despite Dad falling out of bed quite badly, hurting his head and back, he seems to be having quite a good day out at the Cumberland Infirmary with his kids. He’s chirpier now than when we went to Alton Towers in the Eighties. He’s telling jokes, reciting poetry we’ve never heard before and is in great spirits. My patience, on the other hand, is threadbare. The staff have lost Dad’s admission form. I do not recognise myself sometimes these days. I am always angry. The fury bubbles behind my eyes permanently, but I can’t pinpoint why. I’m furious about the bleak existential reality that everything we love and hold dear must grow old, fragile and die at some time, which I’ve sort of always known but have ignored all my life, but here it is in living colour – or rather, here it is in the greys and browns and sludge-like shades of NHS buildings and in the stench of disinfectant and in the chaos of lost admission notes.
‘Hello, Mr Dent, how are you?’ says a nurse, sweeping the curtains aside as she goes.
Dad says something surreal. Skirting board? Orange? Army?
‘Dad has dementia,’ I say to the new nurse. I’ve told the last three nurses.
She nods at me as if she is listening, but she is not. It is not on his medical record as we have no diagnosis and the nurse is so busy herself she doesn’t have time to decipher whether I’m telling the truth.
‘So, Mr Dent, are you taking any medication right now? Do you know off-hand the names of what you are taking?’ she says. ‘Are you registered with a GP in Carlisle?’
‘Dad has dementia,’ I say. ‘Can you ask me these questions? I can tell you the answers.’
She ignores me.
‘Do you know your date of birth?’ she says. ‘1973,’ he says
‘No, you’re older than that.’
The nurse laughs.
But I’m not laughing.
Me and Dave sit for hours after this in the corridor of the Cumberland Infirmary, in a cramped walkway with a queue of elderly people lying on trolleys. The vending machines are all empty, so I can’t even get Dad some Dairy Milk. The automatic door is broken. It feels like a terrible humanitarian disaster has happened, but it hasn’t; this is just an average Saturday in a regional NHS hospital.
We are finally called in to see yet another nurse. ‘Hello, Mr Dent,’ she says. ‘Now, what happened to you today? Are you on any medication right now? I need to check some details. Now, who is your doctor?’
‘Hello, I’m his daughter. My father has dementia. Can you ask me these questions? It will be faster.’
‘Has he?’ says the woman.
‘Yes,’ I say.
‘OK, Mr Dent, what is your date of birth?’ she says, carrying on regardless. ‘Where is your admission form? Did you bring any paperwork with you?’
‘That paperwork went missing,’ I say.
‘OK, why don’t we start that form again from the beginning? George, are you registered with a GP in Carlisle? What is your postcode?’
‘Liverpool, I’m a Scouser,’ says my father.
‘You live in Liverpool?’
‘My father has dementia,’ I say again. I need to get Dad a diagnosis.
‘OK, we’re just going to pop you back in the corridor for a while, then maybe we should start that admission form again. I think it was probably left on the side by the ambulance when you were having the X-ray. Are you the daughter?’ the nurse says.
‘Yes, I’m the daughter,’ I say.
‘This is my little girl,’ says Dad, smiling. I reach out and hold his hand.
Carlisle, 1981
The vestibule door opens. I can hear the television in the living room playing Nationwide with Frank Bough louder now. My father is standing there with a plate. He lets out a laugh when he sees me.
‘Worryadoin’ in here, princess?’ he says.
‘I wanna sleep here,’ I say.
‘Yer Mam said. You wanna live in the vestibule?’
‘Yeah, just for tonight. I wanna sleep here.’
‘You’ve got a screw loose, you have,’ he says.
‘No, I’ve not,’ I say. But even at this early age I know I have a bit.
‘Mam says you’ve gotta eat some of your tea,’ he says. He passes me the plate with cheese-and-ham Findus Crispy Pancakes and a Birds Eye Potato Waffle with a curly smile of tomato sauce.
‘Oh, I forgot the fork,’ he says.
‘S’OK,’ I say, taking the plate.
‘Why do you wanna sleep here?’ he says.
‘I like it better here,’ I say.
The vestibule is freshly painted and feels fancy. Like my own private kingdom.
‘You’ll
get cold,’ he says. ‘And you don’t like spiders.’
‘There won’t be any spiders,’ I say.
He knows I’ll scream the house down at the sight of a daddy-long-legs.
Dad disappears again and comes back with one of his big old work jackets that he wears to the warehouse.
‘OK, put this over you, then you won’t get cold,’ he says.
Now I am warm and snuggly.
I eat my tea and then I get sleepy.
Later, I wake up on the cold, hard floor. I can hear Porridge playing and Dad laughing loudly.
The next time I wake up I’m lying in my own bed.
November 2017
‘Where would you say Carlisle is, George?’
I shift uncomfortably in my seat in the Memory Clinic.
‘Where’s Carlisle?’ the woman repeats.
Dad does not answer.
I feel the pain of the silence acutely.
‘Have you heard of it?’
He smiles. As if he’s about to make a joke to cover up his shame. This is one of his tactics.
‘Can you have a guess?’ she says. He doesn’t.
The woman marks something down in her notes.
I look her directly in the eye, hoping for some comeback.
She looks away sharply.
Two weeks later we have it in print. A diagnosis. Dad has vascular dementia. There’s no sense of relief. Just numbness.
January 2018
‘I was in town before,’ he says to me.
‘Were you, Dad?’ I say.