AN ORDINARY MAN - PART 5 - TOWARDS THE SEVENTH AGE

I had dutifully promised to keep Dad at home for as long as humanly possible, and with the help of the wonderful carers (and some not so wonderful) did my best to keep this promise.

I should explain here that he was living alone in the home he had shared with my Mum from 1955, until her death in 2001. He had returned from the war in Burma in 1946 to a bombed out South East London, and a house in hitherto unknown Bellingham shared with his parents and her younger sister and her husband.

Our family had been allocated a ‘maisonette’ in a new block in Lewisham built on the site of four large Georgian houses which had been destroyed in the bombing. It was a ground floor flat with the front doors up a flight of four stone steps. Kitchen and sitting room were on the ground floor, but the two bedrooms and bathroom with toilet were upstairs, a flight of 13 steps.

At first, with help night and morning to get him up and put him to bed and assistance during the day to get meals, and me doing his washing, shopping and housework – not my favourite occupation by a long chalk – his life was reasonably good. He was able to continue making and receiving phone calls and visits from his family and friends, read his beloved war books and enjoy the telly – especially the old films on in the afternoons. He even carried on trying to make wooden models for his grandchildren and great-grandchildren for a while, but his hands were becoming increasingly stiff, and he eventually had to reluctantly give up on that.

The eventual installation of a stair lift was a great boon, although it soon became too time-consuming for the carers with their limited schedules to take him upstairs to the toilet, so they would help him to use the commode downstairs during the day, and he used the bathroom only night and morning.  That assault on his dignity was very hard for him.

On the subject of bathrooms, he had for some time been unable to get in and out of the bath, so Lewisham Social services – who I always found to be kind and helpful – provided an electric bath lift.  Sadly, by the time it was installed Dad had become too frail to use it safely, so was obliged to rely on the carers giving him a good wash night and morning, a great sadness for a man with a horror of being thought dirty.

I had enquired about the council installing a wet room or walk in shower with a seat. I was foolishly optimistic about this, as there was a big campaign going on at the time called ‘homes fit to live in’ or some such platitude, and large banners sprung up on blocks of flats around Lewisham saying this was aimed to be completed by 2012, just a year or so hence.

The council set about replacing kitchens and bathrooms, most of which were in homes decades newer than my Dad’s flats, which had remained completely un-modernised for 50 years, with the exception of the installation of central heating and double glazing some 20 years previously.  The only alteration to the kitchen was the use of the larder, my Mum’s pride and joy, to house the boiler, which meant the council had to provide another cupboard for food storage.  This turned out to be a tatty small thing which did not match the rest of the  (original) kitchen and provided a quarter of the space of the old larder.

I pointed out that not only was my Dad unable to use his bath, but the walls of the bathroom were damp with a black fungus showing through, causing a health hazard. (He had already begun showing signs of a chest infection, no doubt exacerbated by his increasing immobility).

Furthermore. I said, I thought the government had stipulated these improvements should be done by 2012.  Sorry, was the reply, No chance. The Council had run out of money.  So much for social reform.  Why was this never enforced?

Anyone visiting my Dad’s place now, as I write this after his death in April 2012, can see for themselves exactly how the whole flat looked when we moved in in 1955. Less the fungus, the cracked cistern and crumbling balcony.  The fittings and fixtures to both bathroom and kitchen remain the same, with the exception of the cracked sink which Dad reported 15 years before but was said to be not bad enough to replace.  They had however agreed to replace the toilet a couple of years ago because it was leaking. A shiny new white pan was installed – but imagine my surprise when it did not come with a new cistern, and they replaced the old cracked one.  When I questioned this, I was told ‘no need to – it still works!’.

Welcome to the 51a Granville Park time warp!  We did however notice that whenever a flat became vacant, the council was obliged to bring it up to date before they installed new tenants, usually no-rent paying incomers.  Why were they not equally eager to do the same for an elderly tenant who had faithfully paid every penny of his full rent for nearly 60 years?  A man who had fought for his country and worked all his life.  What a disgrace. Even the Care Company manager was astonished – HER Lewisham Council house was only 15 years old and both the bathroom and the kitchen had just been replaced!

And so life continued.

His 90^th Birthday came and went, with visits from all his grandchildren and great-grandchildren, which now included Matthew, born only 4 days before.  A photo of Dad with my newborn grandson is one of my most treasured possessions.

The excellent carers – a team comprising good folk from every continent – worked hard as Dad became more disabled, eventually unable to stand or even eat unaided. We owe so much to those good people who treated him so well and fought hard to keep him at home.

But Father Time stops for no-one; I myself grew daily a little older and wearier, as the long journey across south London 3 to 5 times a week took its toll.  It would take me at least an hour and a half, usually in excess of 2 hours travel each way, with three changes of bus.  The buses were always packed and I often had to stand, making the journey more and more uncomfortable for a ‘retired’ lady of my vintage!

We were all trying hard to keep him at home, but we knew that something must soon be done, as Dad could no longer now hold the phone, nor make calls, though his carers would sometimes help him do so, this was far from ideal as it was also becoming difficult for him to speak. Thus our nightly long telephone chats which we had been enjoying since my Mum died, came to an end.  He was by now unable even to watch the large TV we had bought him.  Not much of an existence some might say, but he held on bravely to life.

Dads’ bouts of chest infection became more frequent, and he also had a series of diabetic hypos and hypers, the last of which resulted in him being admitted to hospital, on 28^th December 2011, after a sad Christmas for all of us.

The devoted carers wept and begged us not to send him away; they could see the writing on the wall. But much as I loved my Dad I knew this time it was serious. And so an ambulance was called, and my Dad left his home for the very last time.