Lost Worlds

15th June 2011 Wednesday

I sit with my father in the hospital waiting room at the eye clinic. His pupils are dilated from the drops the nurse put in. He says his vision is blurred and he takes my arm when we are called in to see the consultant. He has a cataract in his left eye and macular degeneration in both. There is a waiting list - three months. Already I worry that the appointment will come through when we are on holiday in September and my sister is too. Who will take him to the hospital then? Who will wash his sheets and clean up the spilt fish oil down the side of his fridge? Who will cook him green cabbage in the microwave when he worries about not having enough roughage?

On the way home I stop in at Tesco's to buy him some topside of beef to roast for his breakfasts. I end up spending £63 on fish and olive oil and kitchen paper and lemons among other things I didn’t know I needed. I won’t be able to do that next month. Be careless/carefree at the till.

I tell my husband about my my day while he shells the broad beans we picked at the allotment this evening under brooding thunder clouds. I scrub our first new potatoes and fat carrots for supper and chop purple kale - ignoring the flakey white fly clinging to the underside of the crinkled leaves. He says he has had a good day - things to do.

We start to watch a DVD ‘Some Like it Hot’ with Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe. It’s a while before he remembers the film. But they talk too fast and he says it’s too difficult to follow. So we give it up. He makes tea and we have a spat - about nothing, too much wine - not about what’s really there buried in the coal seam - his lost words. His lost worlds. His despair - and mine.