He’s in a care home now

My father is in a care home now. He’s in the upstairs part of the care home that’s exclusively for people with dementia.

I suppose they put them upstairs as it’s harder for them to wander out of the front door alone. If you want to leave his floor, you have to take a lift down and wait for a receptionist to press a button to release the front door until you’re out in the car park in this tucked away street in south London.

We waited so long to get him there, weeks and weeks he lay in the hospital with his neck brace on, staring at the ceiling. We knew he couldn’t come home as he wouldn’t keep the neck brace on and he might have a fatal fall without it, but we were waiting for the doctors and social workers and local council to make a decision, to find a place for him.

But now he’s finally there.

The wonderful thing about the care home is that he does seem to be somewhat happy. His happiness is hard to pin down (perhaps it always was). Whenever I ask him if he likes it here, he smiles and says, “Oh yes”.

The staff seem to be absolutely golden human beings. I often probe him about whether he likes them and if they’re nice to him, and he smiles and says yes.

His bedroom is always clean, the carpet freshly grooved with lines from vacuuming when I visit. He has his own little bathroom and a window that looks out onto the grey car park and the grey streets beyond. It’s a lot nicer than the hospital, where there was only a bed and UV lights and nothing to occupy his wandering mind.

He likes the food in the care home, and I think he likes being institutionalised. It seems to be comforting to him getting regular meals and snacks, the familiarity of the routine, the lack of spontaneity. He cheerfully greets the staff and the other people there as he walks around.

Usually when I come, they’re all watching TV together, and there’s a sense of companionship. He’s with people who are going through the same thing as him. He’s in a place where people won’t make him feel odd.

He used to like going for walks and exploring exciting places and going to see live music, but I know if I tried to encourage him to do anything like that now it would worry him, make him agitated, fearful, disturb his institutionalised day. It’s strange how he’s changed, and sometimes it feels hard to accept, but we need to do what’s best for him.

What’s best for him doesn’t always feel good for us.

Keeping him in there over Christmas in particular. We considered bringing him out for Christmas day to have lunch with us, but what it would have done to him wasn’t right. It would have been purely for us, not for him.

He would have been so discombobulated just by the car ride to my mother’s house, and then there would be all the noise and people. I remember the Christmas before when he was still living at home, he often ended up sitting quietly, disconnecting from the group or going into another room to be alone. These celebrations become too much – all the crisscrossing conversations and quick laughter.

But I cried and cried after I went to see him just before Christmas, thinking of him there on Christmas day, even with family to come and visit him in his safe place. Our minds aren’t rational about these things. They never can be.

It doesn’t feel right that he’s not living with us any longer but the only way he could be with us would be if we could provide 24-hour wraparound care. We would need to constantly ensure he didn’t wander off through the front door alone, and we’d need to take turns staying awake at night to make sure he didn’t have any more falls. We’d need no jobs to do and no children to look after. Or we’d need to have the money to employ a lot of staff.

Maybe you’re reading this and thinking you’d never do this, if it was your mum or dad you’d keep them at home at all costs. But the reality is that if you were putting your mum or dad first, you would probably want to find a place in a care home.

He needs professional care at this point. We couldn’t keep him safe. It breaks my heart to write that but it’s true.

All we can do is go to visit him when we can. I hug him hard and bring him sweet treats and show him pictures of my children, although I don’t know if he knows who they are. We look at the photo albums he made over the years about his travels, and they comfort me, knowing he lived his life while he had the chance.

And I always cry after I’ve left. I hate the reality of him being there and what’s happened to him. I don’t know when I’ll stop crying about that.

Especially that time before Christmas when I couldn’t stop feeling the guilt about him not being home with us for the festivities. I was driving home, and it was one of those December days when it never really seems to get light at all, the sky pressing down, the bare branches of the trees lining the roads clawing emptily up at it. I wasn’t doing my usual quiet crying with endless tears pouring down my cheeks, but sobbing crying.

It was the radio’s fault. ‘Who Knows Where the Time Goes?’ by Fairport Convention came on, and it was unbearably apt in its words and unbearably poignant in its so typically sixties feel.

The sixties was when my dad went through his teenage years and discovered a lot of the music he loved. I remember discovering his record collection when I was a teenager myself: Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Judy Collins, Joan Baez. I especially loved the women with those sixties pure voices so filled with emotion.

So come the storms of winter
And then the birds in spring again
I have no fear of time

For who knows how my love grows?
And who knows where the time goes?