Suddenly the emotional string that connects me to my Dad got pulled too tight and I had to step on a plane, well several actually, to see him. After six months in hospital following a pointless knee operation, which he wheedled out of the NHS with great skill and determination, he was discharged home with an "intensive home care package" and from our 'phone conversations it sounded like he was struggling to cope.
In fact, by the time I got to Lincoln, tired and jet-lagged following a thirty-odd hour journey, the initial crisis had passed and he was beginning to adapt to his new wheelchair bound existence. Far from being a sick man awaiting my succour, he greeted me as if my arrival was a pleasant surprise motivated by my desire to see him rather than by his desperate circumstances. I felt conned and manipulated like I have been so many times before. Then I felt guilty for feeling exasperated that he didn't seem more sick than he was.
I've given myself a couple of weeks to do what I can before returning to Borneo. So life passes in a whirl of visits to local care homes, social workers, builders and mobility shops in an effort to make me feel I'm making some sort of difference. Last night we watched a documentary together about the fall of Singapore. Dad spent a lot of time in the Far East in the Navy and the programme provided some common ground as he flashed back to his days as a Royal Marine in the forties and fifties and I looked at the suddenly familiar Malaysian jungle and longed to return. Before the programme finished at eight pm Dad's home carer arrived to put him to bed. He meekly followed her to the bedroom in his NHS issue electric wheelchair. By the time the programme had finished he was already fast asleep in his single bed with the home-made motto burned into the headboard - "blessed is the man that loveth a kip".
"Good night Dad" I intoned, before quietly letting myself out and driving back to my bed and breakfast.
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