The flashpoint

In The Flash, I was deeply affected by the Flashpoint storyline -- where Barry Allen travels back in time to stop his Mum from being murdered. He returns to an altered present where he's living a contented, ordinary life with both parents.

He'd give up his superpowers and being a hero just to be able to live a quiet, normal life with his parents.

***

Recently, I've been having dreams about my parents. Ordinary, normal, domestic scenes – there are no flying whales on your wedding day, your cat isn't the pope, I couldn't even tell you what does happen in the dreams. What makes them memorable is my folks are about 20 years younger.

My Dad doesn't have dementia, he can walk and move about all on his own, Mum isn't frail and worn-out and white-haired from being his full-time carer.
Nothing prepares you for seeing your parents get old. Even getting old yourself, the most unexpected thing to happen to a person, is less confronting than watching my parents declining health with their advancing years.

Dad got food poisoning one day. You'd think such a day would live in infamy, but I don't even remember how long ago it was. I think 13 years ago. He was out for dinner with his Rotary club, like any other 'dinner meeting', and several of them got food poisoning. The usual story, bad hygiene practices. One of his friends got so dehydrated from being sick he ended up in hospital.

For Dad, what happened was he wasn't keeping anything in his stomach long enough to digest it, and his various drugs stopped being absorbed. His blood pressure went up. He had a stroke. In many ways, I lost him that day. He's not been the same since, though other minor strokes have followed in the intervening years.

His personality changed from then, he stopped working or volunteering in the community. Even what he liked reading changed. The man I knew and loved as my Dad changed, and his decline has been heartbreaking.

***

He was hospitalised after another stroke at Easter last year. We were camping in the outback splendour of Karijini National Park and in a brief moment of mobile signal, I got a message from my brother. Mum, as usual, hadn't wanted to worry me, hadn't wanted to spoil my trip. Dad was fine, she said.

Despite a global pandemic, I investigated if I could get permission to visit. Who did I need to ask to grant me permission to leave Australia, and would I be allowed to return? Maybe I could have got it, had I ever been able to get a simple letter from my Dad's GP outlining his health condition and why it was important for me to visit then, not later. Whether anyone ever asked his GP for that letter, I don't know, and I'll never know if I would have been granted that permission.

Just over a year later, with national and state borders open (and more active Covid cases than we'd ever seen) I got to make that visit. I hadn't been back since 2019 and I felt acutely aware that every month passing without seeing my Dad was a gamble. This week was meant to be the first day after the end of a temporary work contract; the contract got extended but I went anyway. You can push your luck too far.

***

These days, Dad is now mostly confined to his armchair. He can walk short distances with a walker but says he'll fall if he goes too far. The result is he can make it to the bathroom on his own, and most of the time he makes it there in time. He watches TV, constantly changing channels, unable to read what the on-screen TV guide says. He turns it off and commands Alexa to play the radio. He changes stations. He tells Alexa to read to him from Sherlock Holmes. He turns the volume up. He cycles between these things all day, barely giving any long enough to hold his interest.

The hardest thing of all is he has no filter. He tells me honestly how he's afraid to die, that he wakes up early in the morning and lying there, unable to fall back asleep, he worries about death. What it will feel like to die. How horrible it will be for my Mum to find him. 

I try and reassure him, you've a long way to go yet, you'll live to be 100! You'll get letters from the Queen!  He whines; I don't want to be 100. I don't know what to tell him. Occasionally, he holds my hand, tells me he's proud of me. If I don't see you again, I want you to know... or if I don't make it... 

I tell him there's something I need to go do. I'm 41 years old and I'm crying in my bedroom alone.

***

One day when we're out, he seems to have some kind of attack. We're telling him it's time to go home, but he's just staring. He's awake, but he's not responding, not moving. We're talking to him, asking if he's ok, asking if he can hear us. One hand is gripping the table. He starts to drool. I think to myself, is this it? Is this when I lose him? 

After what is probably seconds but feels like an hour, he comes back. He can't walk, but we have his wheelchair. Soon he's himself again. What passes for himself when he's a hollow shell of the man who used to be my Dad.

It's called a TIA, a transient ischaemic attack. A minor stroke with symptoms that resolve within hours to a day. Nobody else in the family seems all that alarmed, he's had them before, he's already on all the medication he can be, the hospital can't do anything. But it's a warning, and a reminder that I could lose him any day.

We're going back at Christmas, for a proper visit. I only hope that I don't have go back for his funeral before then.