The Authentic Eclectic

The Serpents’ Tooth

Where are my feelings?

From “King Lear”

Now

My mother sits in the armchair at the care home. My father and I have driven for 30 minutes on this dark winter afternoon. Dad is still a big man, but cannot walk more than a few yards, so I have to push his wheelchair from the car park into the building. The car park is at the bottom of a long slope — it’s hard work and I have arthritis in one knee. But she recognises us, and is thrilled to see Dad. They’ve been together for almost 70 years and married for 64 of them.

Mum is thin and frail now, where she was once stocky and powerful. Her hair is snow-white. Her eyes, which I remember as narrowed and blazing with anger, are wide and unfocused. She speaks in half-sentences, without a subject, pointing vaguely around her. Occasionally she breaks into a drawn-out wailing sound, intended to bring the carers running. She incessantly demands to be taken to the toilet. The carers are gentle and obliging with her, but if they suggest doing something she doesn’t want to do, she becomes aggressive and stubborn, like a child. When her social worker visits, she answers his questions politely, then in the next breath turns to Dad or the carer and demands that they “Get that wog (sic) out of my room!”. She looks at Dad with adoration, and at me with equal measures of…