inundated April

Last week seemed primed to awaken my senses and drag me out of the mild torpor induced by a shortage of engaging and profitable work. After a little more funding trickled in on Tuesday for a project that had been largely completed before Easter I felt I had at least earned my keep for a day. I think my wife had gone out to play violin in the evening and so I had settled down at the end of the evening to find something soothing to watch on television, when I came across a broadcast of "Apocalypse Now". This is not a film I have to watch the whole way through (I have it in any case in  my private DVD collection - i.e. not one I share with my sons yet) and so I sat and enjoyed the theater of the "Ride of the Valkyries" scene while my wife came home, warmed a cup of milk each and went to bed, leaving me to my incomprehensible explosions/surfing. I enjoyed the balletic carnage until the surfing was done, overlaying another choreographed combat scene from "The Fifth Element" in my mind. The trick that both of these scenes use is to create a tempo and grace in an otherwise chaotic and repugnant reportage, touched too by humour - though blacker in "Apocalypse". I slept well.

Wednesday dawned windy and wet; atmospheric. I drove out across the forest roads to look at the trees and was blessed with a close encounter with a cuckoo - or so I believe; it had the sharp wings and direct flight, but the view was too brief to be sure. It may have been a diving thrush of some sort. Radio 3 was playing and without the usual ante-listening pause, after an announcement that simply declared Bach, they played one of my very favourite pieces - the Allegro Moderato from the Musical Offering. The absence of any silent space and the unfamiliar recording left me confused for the first bar, but speechless for the few minutes of the work. And in the morning some more work arrived for me, stretching my load out towards September. I was quite contented and busy when I took the phonecall to say that my Dad had had a heart attack.

It was my sister who had heard the news first and it was she who went rushing round to see what she could do to help. With a dearth of new information I waited until Thursday morning before my instincts took me away from my work and onto the motorways.

In such circumstances it is always easier to be close to the root of the uncertainty than far away. Operating at a phone's length, trying perhaps to interact with real life when someone you love is being faced with real death, is hard. On Thursday we watched a sedated man, not moving. We heard the pessimistic (but realistic) talk about waiting a couple of days and then making hard decision, twice. We sat and willed whatever agency was left to hang around a while, to look after his wife and watch his grandchildren growing. We sat in intensive care, our eyes stung by the atmosphere, thinking (mostly) our own thoughts. This part had not been in the script. We had both, independently, anticipated a sudden loss, or an illness with a predictable outcome, but neither of us had expected the uncertainty of a life, hypothermically suspended in a medicated coma.


There were heavy showers.

On Friday, warmed and with the stupifying drugs removed, we watched and willed harder. The consultants had stretched their period of watchfulness before hope could be abandoned by a couple of days, based on the degree of body self-regulation indicated on the charting instruments.

The showers ganged up on each other and fought across the sky.

On Saturday there was some movement, but no sign of cognition. Expert opinion was becoming grudgingly less pessimistic. What reactions could be envoked were good ones (e.g. with some underlying intent to address the cause of attention, rather than being simply reflexes).

It was unrelenting rain that redoubled in the afternoon. The queue for the sole working car park ticket machine was miserable and, after paddling across the car park to the hospital, I considered whether getting my foot stuck in the Dyson Airblade was a worthwhile risk to take to dry off my sandals.

On Sunday the movement spread from left arm, right shoulder and hips, to lifting the left arm, moving the right, legs twisting and back arching. When asked firmly to open eyes, there was some evident attempt to comply. Eyes, were glimpsed, but still sightless. Breathing was entirely under self control, the machine just boosting oxygen.

It was glorious sunshine from an almost cloudless sky (although it did threaten to become showery again in the afternoon, the clouds just couldn't agree, so they dissipated again). On the way home it began to rain at about 10pm, around the M4.

On Monday, after removing the tube that had been used to support breathing since the sedation, Dad breathed through his throat and his mouth was freed for talking, and he did. Eyes open and thankful for the glasses which had been waiting patiently all week. Limbs moving but weak. Self rebooted, and although mildly confused (as can happen after 5 days slide by unnoticed), common sense largely restored.
Today, with stuff to do and somewhat happier, my return to work. On a work day I carry the briefcase that my Dad carried to work from some time in the mid-70s until he replaced it with a lighter bag. It is an old Custom case with plastic moulded sides and bright catches clamping an aluminium, hinged maw. For its age (older than many of my colleagues) it is in good condition, still with the Dymo label stickers in red/green for port and starboard that my Dad attached to remind him to open the case the right way up. Transfering keys and phones from hand to hand as I left the parked car this morning it slipped from my hand and accumulated another small dent on one bottom corner; a metaphor I thought for its first owner.

Out walking at lunch time I saw an orange tip butterfly, and the sun shining.