Days With My Father
My Mum died suddenly on September 4th, 2006
After she died, I realized how much she’d been shielding me from my father’s mental state.
He doesn’t have alzheimers, but he has no short-term memory, and is often lost.
I took him to my mother’s funeral, and to the burial, but when we got home, he’d ask me every 15 minutes where my mother was. I’d explain carefully that she had died, and we’d been to her funeral.
This was shocking news to him
Why had no-one told him?
Why hadn’t I taken him to the funeral?
Why hadn’t he visited her in the hospital?
He had no memory of these events.
After a while, I realized I couldn’t keep telling him that his wife had died. He didn’t remember, and it was killing both of us, to re-live her death constantly.
I decided to tell him she’d gone to Paris, to take care of her brother, who was sick.
And that’s where she is now.
This site is a journal.
An ongoing record of my father, and of our relationship.
For whatever days we have left together.
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