Closing time

One of the more unexpected outcomes of my first relapse was a hospital threat demanding payment for damaged property.

I hadn’t had a spasm and smashed a window with my elbow, I hadn’t taken a wheelchair on a late-night drag race and I hadn’t got so fed up with the 6am stats checks that I blocked a toilet with a blood pressure monitor.

In fact, it wasn't even me who did the damage, it was my dad.

Context: On the evening of the day I had been admitted, my parents had been walking down the corridor that mum had used for an earlier visit and dad pushed on the door that had been previously fine to use.

This time, however, it made an ominous sounding crunch causing a very angry nurse to shout that he wasn't allowed to use that door, berate him in the corridor and demand his address with the promise he'd be written to and money would be due.

My dad is not a vandal. He is mild mannered with a fuse longer than anyone I know. He is calm and measured, artistic and funny, polite and thoughtful but on the day that I was admitted, he just wanted to get through that door with my mum and see me.

I was thinking of this unlikely corridor contretemps recently, watching him at his worktable in his pyjamas, fluffy beard, patiently painting.

He’s been doing a lot of sitting in his pyjamas recently because eight weeks ago he was diagnosed with cancer. A word that you hear all the time, and know by the statistics will come knocking for someone you love, but you never really want to believe it.

He was diagnosed after he’d already undergone a heart procedure – a double whammy of hospital wretchedness that crystallised for me, as my diagnosis would have done for them, the fact that I cannot stop bad things happening to my parents. I want to, but I cannot ever, fully protect them.

It’s disconcerting, this role reversal of protection, but it’s not unexpected. I’m in my 40s now and my parents are ageing, they are more at risk of disease, of accidents, of danger.  I don’t like it and I can’t stop it, but the risks are only going to get larger as time goes on.

When you’re younger, parents seem indestructible - angels hewn from granite. The most important people in your life and, if you are fortunate, protectors of your whole world.

But as we age we realise they are not infallible; in their opinions, their knowledge - or in their health.

My dad has been lucky, his cancer was caught early, the offending growth removed before it had chance to spread. He’s recovering from surgery and will be monitored for the next five years.

Since his op we’ve chatted quite a lot about the remarkable NHS staff, the wonderful care he received and the long and slow recovery process – a situation I can fully sympathise with.

We’ve both pushed each other down corridors in wheelchairs, we’ve both sat bewildered in hospital beds wondering what will happen next, we’ve both run through scenarios we don’t want in our heads.

We have a lot of things in common, my dad and me - love for Bob Dylan, obsession with ice-cream and an unashamed delight in dreadful puns - and recently we've found a little bit more. A bittersweet blessing.

:: Closing time by Fairport Convention

* If you're wondering what happened with the door, dad never did receive a letter demanding payment. But I'm pretty sure he would have pushed through anything to get to me that day. And, unlike the damaged door, that’s something which works both ways.