Not Dying today

19th December 2011 Monday

Not Dying Today

I’m in Marks and Spencer’s buying soft socks when my husband rings with a message from my father’s home. He is better, not so confused, the district nurse has taken blood samples, the doctor may come or not, he won’t be going to hospital, the home can manage him for now. So I feel a space in my ribcage. I can do my shopping with the alarm bells off. Even so the crowds on the pavements, the insistent rain and my indecision send me home before I reach the end of my list.

My husband makes us lunch - garlicky mushrooms on toast. I watch the blue-tits hanging from the bird feeder. The garden is sodden - a single pink rose on a long stem waves in the wind like a flag of surrender. Or hope.

I can’t face any more shopping but my husband offers to drive me to Morrisons where we buy non-Christmas stuff like washing powder and cling film. And a huge three kilo salmon on special half price offer which I have to bend into a fat slippery collar to fit in the freezer.

Later my sister and I sit with our father in the downstairs lounge at his home - no-one seems to know how he got there - and we read him his Christmas post. One card is signed George but he doesn’t know who George is. Mostly he is transfixed by four tropical fish swimming in the tank across the other side of the room - burbling oxygen bubbles breaking the surface like showers of glass beads.

He says ‘Those sheep are watching me’.

I say, ‘It’s a good job no-one can hear you or they’d think you were loopy.’

And we laugh because today he doesn’t look like he is dying. Like he did two days ago with his eyes all vacant in the black hollows of his skull.