Each day at 4:30 my brother calls in at the rest home to see Dad. My visits can be months apart. Five minutes after you've left, heāll have forgotten you were there, but every time, his face lights up and itās a warm happy visit.
Tim takes care of almost everything and we're very grateful to him. Youāll be with him when his phone rings and after a pause heāll say No, sorry, this is his son. Heās 99. So Iām doing his communication for him.
There will be the odd day when Dad will tell Tim he's a bit tired of this living business. But mostly he's smiling and giving banter, many hours each day reading the paper and his books. The memory trouble doesnāt seem to hamper that.
I was back down there this week because we agreed it would be nice to be together, one year on from losing Mum. How long do you think you might stay, Tim wanted to know, because Dadās got a cataract thing scheduled.
I said Well, howās that for coincidence?
He said they had cleared him for surgery and it looked as though it was all a go. I said it was certainly a straightforward procedure but I did wonder if the short-term memory loss might cause some difficulty. Would he become bewildered in the middle procedure, or puzzled afterwards to find his eye covered with a patch?
Probably helpful that I could be there, we agreed.
On the road again; podcasts, chargers and coffee. Swear there is no better stop on State Highway One than Cafe Express in Waiouru. Unfeasibly huge plates of homestyle Italian cooking. The hungry outdoors guys and truckers love it and so do I, and so does everyone on Trip Advisor.
Turning in at Mangaweka and up Ruahine Road and on to Rangiwahia and down to Kimbolton and Kiwitea past the homes we shared and getting near and being flooded with memories. More of the same in Feilding.
On to Masterton and the three of us sit and talk and walk, my brother, my sister and me. We donāt have any particular plan, just coming to terms with it a bit more, with the loss, with the reminder that we have a lot more gone than we still have in store. Itās lifeās cruel trick that we get something incredible but donāt get to keep it. You go on trying to make some sense of that and find a way to come to terms with it.
Around to Dad in the morning and my sister helps him get dressed and we explain what's in store. I show him a photo of me last month with a patch over my eye.
Checking him in at the hospital, we explain about his short-term memory loss. They tell us that they can make some room so that one of us can go in with him.
Itās all the same prep I had four weeks ago: name, age, confirm the procedure youāre here for, confirm it's this eye, yes, the right one and they stick a little marker above it and administer the first of the drops that will numb and dilate it.
You donāt get the sense Dad has really grasped whatās at play here, but heās happily going along with it all. Occasionally I show him the eye-patch photo again and tell the story again. At one point the nurse tells him something about the procedure and he hams it up for her, feigning horror at the idea of anyone coming at his eye.
Every ten to fifteen minutes another patient emerges from the theatre wearing a patch. And now it's his turn, and another nurse comes to take him in. I explain again about the short-term memory loss and the worry that he might get bewildered and she says it's fine for me to come in if I'd like. She tells me One of us would have been sitting next to him holding his hand but you can do that job. So now I'm getting gowned up as well and in we go.
Out of the wheel chair and onto the gurney, and a blanket over him, and as they begin to go to work on him I get to see all the elements that were out of sight to me in my own procedure: the Clockwork Orange device that holds your eye open, the surgical instruments, the equipment, the sheet they spread across your face and then cut a hole above your eye. So fascinating and satisfying to putting a face to the various sounds and sensations.
A nurse explains to Dad that sheās going to wash his face with prep solution and as she begins to brush it on, he yelps. He'll do that, this otherwise quiet person, whenever he gets an unexpected sensation of temperature, hot or cold. Itās unremarkable if youāve had a lifetime of his being vocal about it but it momentarily startles them. However he follows that with It feels like I'm at the South Pole. and it becomes evident thereās nothing to worry about and they resume their steady work.
The surgeon introduces himself and briefly explains what's going to happen and then says Right, weāre ready to get started.
There's a screen they've swung around so that I can see the whole procedure in vivid, large screen detail. It's amazing, once you get past the jarring thought that this is your 99-year-old Dad's eye those sharp objects will be going into. Surgical steel, cornea, flesh and fluidity. He eases the scalpel in so delicately, and at last I get to see how the incision is made; the thing I've been wondering about since I had mine (he also explains how they bond it shut afterwards so you don't need stitches) and now I'm watching the scalpel moving just so, doing its manoeuvring work like some exquisitely tiny spatula being slipped deftly beneath a little egg.
The surgeon tells him it's important he sits still because if he moves his cheek it could bump his scalpel. As far as I can see Dad's inert, so Iām assuming itās just precautionary advice. But you worry.
I got just a friendly how are you doing under there, alright? a couple of times from my surgeon for my procedures. This one, though, is describing each step as we go and it's fascinating, although I'm not sure how much it may mean to Dad if he's not all that clear in the first place about why we're here.
He's quiet, just going along with it all, and I'm doing my assigned job, on the stool alongside, holding his hand throughout. We would have last done this when I was three years old.
And then a sound begins that I had been utterly intrigued by when it was my turn last month. It rises and falls, it's a friendly sort of musical sound, a sort of merry-go-round at the carnival tone. I suspected it was equipment, but I was also open to the possibility that they just had interesting music while they worked. Iāve had a different perceptive ever since the movie that showed surgeons playing the country classic Why Don't We Get Drunk and Screw.
Now everything is clear: it's calibrated to the monitor that's reading out the data, and the tones are guiding the surgeon as to depth, width and measurements. An impressive pieces of high tech equipment that provides an abundance of data and accuracy to help them to work their way through a long roster of patients this morning in Masterton.
I watch the scalpel move delicately carefully around, I watch the old lens being reduced to a pile of crumpled plastic tissue and removed.
Out comes a 99-year old lens, in goes a new intra-ocular one.
And then the Surgeon is telling him it's all done, it's all gone perfectly well, they'll just be putting a patch on him now and then he'll be good to go.
Dad exclaims: I didn't feel a thing.
He certainly didn't make a sound. He certainly didn't seem agitated. You hear this, and you think was the whole thing making sense to him all along? Or is he maybe just saying that because he still knows to say in a given situation, the vestigial muscle memory of social exchange?
They help him back into the wheelchair and we wheel him back out to reception. We thank the nurse who gives us all the prescriptions and papers. And then we sit there for a few moment while my sister brings the car to the door.
He touches the bandage and says, I've got something strange on my face.
Back we go to the rest home, and it's not long before he's worrying at this tape on his face that is uncomfortable that's inexplicably appeared.
There will be changes of tape through the day to keep it on, and I'm so thankful to my sister Belinda and the rest home for the way they so patiently work with him and keep explaining what's happened.
Right to the very end you go on needing to make sense of things.
The sole album Dad ever asked me to buy for him.
