To Dance with my Father Again

I’m not sure I’m ready to write this as I sit this crisp, cold autumn morning, thinking of the subject matter. This week sees the 6th anniversary of my Dad’s death and I have spent this weekend trawling through old photographs which has been a bitter sweet experience. It became obvious that I don’t have many photos of my Dad and I suppose there were several reasons for this. My early childhood pictures were mainly of myself and my brother, or some included my Mum - I suppose that Dad was behind the camera. Later pictures rarely had him feature as he was always more comfortable in the background of events. That all said, it was therefore a treat to find the few snaps that we did and to glimpse the hidden memories from the past.

An unassuming man, Dad worked hard to make our lives better and mostly left us to follow our own interests, just as he was free to follow his own interest in athletics and walking. When you’re a child you don’t think to ask your parents how they are feeling or what they would like to do. You just spend your time demanding things from your parents without any consideration of their wishes. Yet, looking back, we did spend many a Saturday ‘helping’ Dad at his athletics club, so perhaps he did have time for himself.

For many years Dad liked a beer or two, or maybe more, on a regular basis. In the days when he was still teaching it was acceptable for staff to pop out for a pub lunch and a swift pint on a Friday lunchtime, before returning to lead lessons in the afternoon. The educational landscape has changed dramatically since and there wouldn’t be time now to get to the pub and back, let alone consume anything and let’s leave any moral issues about alcohol consumption by those in positions of authority to one side! Back then though, Friday saw the teachers lunching at the pub and seemingly having a more positive work-life balance than current times, and still supporting their students to achieve good results.

Our Sunday habits involved walking and a pub too. Dad would take us out for a walk, usually to spend time in a park, whilst Mum cooked the Sunday lunch. I remember with fondness sitting outside the pub with a bottle of coke and a packet of crisps that we had added salt to, from a little blue bag. After returning home and eating our roast dinner, Dad would doze off on the sofa - sleeping off the beer and roast potatoes!

The few photos that we did find were mostly linked to athletics and walking. Dad with his stop watch in hand, ready to be official timekeeper at a race meeting at Battersea or Crystal Palace, or a few with him in his full running outfit at the end of a race - clearly not looking his best. The walking pictures were usually from our family holidays on the Isle of Wight. We used to joke that we could only go somewhere exciting if we could walk there first! Often we would walk 5 miles or more to our destination but that was all part of the experience - climbing styles, avoiding nettles and cows in a farmer’s field, trying to negotiate a cliff path that was perilously close to a sheer drop! 

As I grew older I know that I felt closer to Mum, than Dad. Perhaps that’s s girl thing? Girly shopping outings as a teenager replaced by conversations on common ground about married life and then childbirth and raising toddlers. These phases are where I didn’t think to include my Dad more.

All too soon, he had suffered a stroke which brought on dementia and it was too late then to ask him meaningful questions. Adopting the role of carer with him, those were the times when Dad was in the room but spiritually elsewhere. Memories were often discussed with close family or friends at this time, with Dad sat alongside, out of a need to try to include him and in the vague hope that a shared memory would bring him some comfort or respite from his daily anxieties at the time.

There’s a line from the show ‘Blood Brothers’ referring to the character’s mind going dancing. Perhaps by this time, Dad’s mind was dancing, or in his case running a marathon. I wish I could remember a time when we had danced together though and think of the song lyric with pangs of regret. So, make the most of your time: sing, dance, laugh, walk up a hill together and take photos to share - not of stuff, instagram meals and landscapes, but of people who matter, all of them. 

Parent Sandwich

People make different choices about their relationships. Back in the 80s, when I met my husband, within our social circles, it was still the accepted norm to meet someone, get married and then have kids. We followed that pattern and after 7 years of marriage, started our family.

When you have a freedom like that, you don't really appreciate it. Those 7 years where we could stay up talking to friends until 3 in the morning, cadge Sunday dinner off the in-laws with little notice, lay in bed on a Sunday morning until it was actually Sunday afternoon and fit in work commitments around it all and still have plenty of time for each other.

Then Bam!  Babies arrive and you can't distinguish one end of the day from another. Relentless rounds of feeding, changing, smiling at relatives and friends who've come round to coo, leave you unable to stir a cuppa, so stirring any passion is completely out of the question. After childbirth your intimate areas don't quite hold the allure of sultry promise as previously. When you've had to put your private parts in the public domain of a hospital birth it seems like everyone's had a look up there including the guy who only came in to the room to change the bins! So it takes a while to think of yourself as attractive again.

Though debilitating at the time, the sharp end of parenthood passes after a while and then you continue on to each new phase or, if you're like us,  you do it all again and repeat the baby madness with the added complication of a toddler in the mix. If you think the 1st was tricky, you don't know what has hit you with a 2nd!

Still, without any formal parenting qualification and no prior manual of support, we grew into our parent role and did the best we could to support our kids from one phase to another: baby, toddler, school years into teenager and beyond.

Somewhere along the line, it gets easier doesn't it? Kids grow up and the family dynamic changes and you get to that point where you can stop being so much of a parent and get back a little of that freedom can't you? I mean, that appeared to be what I observed some friends doing. I began to think of possible couple holidays that we might have and fantasize about moments of calm, in a more settled house. Ask a woman what her fantasies are and you might expect all sorts of erotic scenarios with various hunks playing the lead. Actually, it's more likely to involve the need to carve out a bit of peace and quiet, sipping wine somewhere with a pleasant view and a slice of cake!

Anyway, I should get to the 'parent sandwich.' This is something that has happened to us over the last decade I suppose. Not only are we parents to our kids, something that we willingly if somewhat naively signed up for, but somewhere along the line we have adopted the role of parent to our own parents.

I lost my Dad six years ago but to be more accurate, I lost the clever, funny, kind man that he was ten years ago when his illness struck and smudged areas of brilliance in his brain. So looking back on it, from then I had to step into that parent role to explain basic daily things to my Dad and to support my Mum. Not only had she lost all the things I had with Dad, but she had lost her soulmate too and looked like a ship cast away on what was to become a very stormy sea.

Not long after his death, I almost lost my Mum too. A perforated bowel and sepsis did not make a good prognosis but somehow, after all the difficult years with Dad, she found the strength and reserves to come out the other side fighting.  It was probably a six month fight when at its most difficult, yet to this day she lives with the effects of the time. Being the positive person she is, she manages well and doesn't often let on that she's feeling emotional or anxious or lonely. So my 'parent' duties with Mum have reduced to more of a checking in and supporting from time to time and that's absolutely fine. 

More recently, it is my husband's turn to be the sandwich filling. Both of his parents are now in their 70s and have growing health issues and lessening independence. A proud and driven man, he has risen admirably to the task and, as the eldest child, feels duty bound to carry the weight of it all on his shoulders alone.

I never realised how the lines of responsibility and duties of care blur as your parents enter that phase of life, where they need you back in their lives more than they ever like to admit.
Like a dough stretched out, being pulled from each end by our kids and our parents, I find the safest survival tactic is to stick together and hang on in there. From time to time, they loosen their grip and we can take up the slack to remould ourselves and start again. 
We may not be in a place where an exotic couple's holiday is possible but a moment here and there for each other will have to do. I'm lucky to still have the man by my side who was acceptable in the 80s and, all things considered, he's okay now too.

If you're currently coping with a parent with dementia there are support networks out there, for example: https://www.dementiauk.org/ 
Perhaps you have other methods of support that you can recommend too?