My mother was about to be taken to a care home called Willow Trees, and the first thing my instincts told me about that was that willow trees would not be the prevailing feature there. When I looked it up, my suspicions were confirmed. Not only could I not see willow trees, it also had a low rating for infection and safety.
I phoned a private company to be quoted a mind-blowing fee for a live-in carer for a week or two, until I can get there, so she can be discharged from the hospital ward where they are holding her – there is no other word for it – while my father is recovering from a stroke.
‘One thing leads to another. If we let the NHS send her to that home, we don’t know what will go wrong next,’ I told my father on the phone, as he lay in his hospital bed.
He agreed. One thing has led to another relentlessly for four years. My mother has had a tumour, various bleeds and sudden onset dementia. My father has had a heart attack from a blood clot and now a stroke, also caused by a blood clot, in the back of his brain, the doctors rang me eventually to say.
‘Righto,’ I told the doctor. ‘Well, we are where we are, and I have my theories.’
The doctor let out a strangled, embarrassed cough of a laugh. I wasn’t sure I understood what was funny.
‘I take it you’re discharging him with anticoagulants?’ I said. ‘And will you please impress on him the importance of taking his blood thinners, because he’s so determined to prove that his blood cannot be clotting, because there is nothing in his system that could possibly make it clot, that I’m not convinced he took his pills when they discharged him after the heart attack.’
The doctor said she would tell my father he must take the blood thinners. Then she said: ‘What’s your name?’
I said my name was Mr Kite’s daughter. ‘What’s your name?’ she insisted. I told her. ‘Well, you take care,’ she said, in a quiet, careful tone that was just weird.
I can’t take any more. Most days I have about 46 voice messages
It was shortly after that, while staring into space through the kitchen window, I saw two black-and-white horses running down the road. ‘Oh, horses,’ I thought. Then, I thought: ‘They look like our horses.’ Then I shouted: ‘They’re our horses! For heaven’s sake!’
I was so tired I hadn’t swizzled the padlock enough, so Jimmy and Duey, the fat cobs, had worked the yard gate loose and taken themselves for a jog. One thing leads to another…
I ran down the road, managed to get hold of them and led them back, waving down cars. Then I signed a contract to pay a baffling amount of money to have someone move into my parents’ spare room so my mother could return home, as opposed to being miserable and disorientated in an institution where she would get what the state thought best for her – beginning with a Covid booster, no doubt.
I can’t take any more. Most days I have about 46 voice messages. I take a call from the hospital where my father is and while I’m doing that, the hospital where my mother is rings. While I’m calling them back, the social services ring, and while I’m returning calls to them, I miss several calls from my mother, crying about where she is and where my father has gone.
Then a physiotherapist will ring to tell me about ‘dad’s’ progress. The nursing staff like to talk, so I put them on speakerphone and lay my head on the kitchen table and have a nap. I awake periodically to hear a girl with a Brummie accent giving me a blow-by-blow account of ‘dad making a cup of tea’. I half-doze off again, one side of my face on a wooden table, drooling.
‘I don’t know if you’ve noticed,’ she says cheerfully, ‘but in the kitchen area dad’s very much more mobile and can now remember layouts!’
‘No, in Ireland,’ I mumble but she’s not listening. She has no idea I’m not there, or if she has, she cannot digest the distance between West Cork and the West Midlands, nor the distance between me and my father spiritually, which widened to an impossible, everlasting gulf after we fell out over me being anti-vax.
She starts explaining how ‘dad puts his socks on’, how ‘dad’s walking better’, and whether ‘dad could do online shopping’ – she thinks he probably could…
‘Thas good,’ I slur, dribbling a bit.
‘So dad’s doing really well considering everything. Is that the impression you get?’
Darn it, she wants me to speak, so I say: ‘Yeah, considering, very good… just one heart attack and one stroke…’
She’s not listening. ‘Are you free Thursday?’ she says. I say: ‘What? You’re discharging him on Thursday?’
‘Are you free to talk more on Thursday?’ Talk more? More than this?
‘Thursday,’ I say, settling my head back on the kitchen table. ‘Thursday. I think I might be dead by then…’
‘Oh dear, what’s happened?’ she asks. ‘This,’ I say, ‘this happened…uurrrr…’ And then I’m aware I’m just making a sound that is somewhere between sobbing and snoring.
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