Visiting Time

My daughter was born 3 months before my Father died, he spent the last year of his life in a nursing home. In the years before that when my son was about 2 or 3, while he was still living with my Mother at their bungalow, he was in and out of hospital regularly. His health was deteriorating for sure but there were times when a little attention and care were probably all he needed but it was far easier for my Mother to call an ambulance. 

  Reeling off her own health issues and feigning mild hysteria she easily persuaded the crews that he wasn`t in the best hands at home and a hospital assessment would be more appropriate. I also suspect they were experienced at reading between the lines and knowing there would just be repeated 999 calls until he was off her hands for a few days. It was hard to be involved with him at home. I had a little boy to care for and they weren`t up and about until late morning/lunchtime, set in their ways, they napped in the afternoons and ate late at night, it was hard to pick a time that they didn`t feel inconvenient and that fitted around my own routine with a small child and house to run myself. Ultimately though it wasn`t really a little extra support she wanted, it was him moved to a home and eventually that happened. 

During the times he was in hospital I visited him and there began to be a change. His whole demeanour was different when he was away from her and on a ward. He made friends easily with the other patients and really enjoyed chatting and joking with them, with the nursing staff too. He had an observational humour like my own and people watching to pass the time gave him endless little funny stories and scenarios to relay to me when I visited. I would find him sitting up waiting for me, all smiles and the old twinkle back in his blue eyes. I bought him little treats which he appreciated and photos of his Grand Son along with scribbly drawings he had done, they were all proudly displayed by his bed. We chatted easily about all sorts of things and the time would fly by. When I got up to leave as the bell had rung he would say "Oh have a few more minutes, they won`t throw you out". I think we both began to look forward to the visits, we reconnected and there was a quite, unspoken realisation that this is how things could of been, had my Mother been different.  

We really would of been the best of friends. Those visits were such happy times, I loved us being together, it was wonderful. I told my Mother brief health updates about him but was very guarded and never let her know how much fun we had as I knew it would trigger her. She was already displeased about the attention he got even though I still called to see her. She was telling me about a hospital appointment she had, during a phone call one day and without thinking I casually said "OH, will you be popping in to see Dad while you`re there?" BIG MISTAKE. I had just unwittingly transferred the focus back on to my father from her and she was already smarting that he was upstaging her. I received an angry tirade...she was far too ill, weak and worn out to go traipsing all down them corridors to go n see im when she had sat for hours n hours at her OWN appointment n didn`t he av enough visitors already, I needed to remember how old she was.....etc....etc... etc.... And with that the phone was put down. 

I`ll add here that when I visited my Father, Mother choose not to come along because when I saw her, she preferred it to be just her, a visit to my Father, the two of us together, would count as seeing her too and may mean she would miss out on a dinner at mine or a shopping trip, so it was NO, you go and see Dad by yourself and I`LL see you another day. The same with her own appointments, she liked a taxi to the hospital then a taxi to town for shopping or Bingo and then a taxi home. If I took her it would just be the appointment or a visit to Father as well. So not too tired to traipse around town then after, just to traipse to see Father. {a lot of detail there but I strive to give insight of how she staged managed everything for her own benefit whilst putting a completely different spin on it to illicit endless sympathy for her plight}.

So I`m next due to visit Father on a Saturday afternoon, when she is usually at the Bingo. But it turns out she has made an unscheduled visit the day before, without telling me {we usually told each other of intended visits to space them evenly between us} I arrive with a spring in my step, all smiles, bearing treats but as I near his bed I can tell something`s up. He is straight faced and scowling. 

 I say Hello, ask how he is and show him what I`ve bought him, he barely answers and shows no interest. I just know she has been and put the poison down for me. He then says he needs me to understand something...I`m told very coldly that I need to have more consideration for my Mother because of her age, health, fragility etc etc and I should not bully her about coming to visit him and understand that its very difficult for her to get there as she doesn`t have a car like me and I should have more thought.... It`s not so much what he says, I`ve been hearing these speeches all my life, its the way he speaks to me. As if he`s quite disgusted in me and has not an ounce of respect or affection for me. I try to explain the situation and her refusal of lifts to see him with me, but he will hear none of it and just repeats himself, he is getting quite angry and I am on the verge of tears, frustrated and really very hurt. I don`t want to give either of them the satisfaction of knowing he has reduced me to tears which would delight her and earn him brownie points...I made er cry Ivy ! Did ya ! Did ya Geoff !.... so I say a swift goodbye and go. 

I walk to the car, tears steaming, I just cannot keep them in, try as I may. I get a few odd looks, people maybe thinking someone was very ill or I had heard bad news. I got to the car and sat there for a long while, silent tears rolling down my face still. I think he managed to break my heart just a little bit more that day, what bits of it weren`t already broken. You see I had allowed myself to forget that he would never be loyal to me. And I had allowed myself to believe that we were a normal Father and Daughter, who behaved in a relaxed and loving way with each other....and I had dared to hope that a bond may have been built. How wrong I was. As ever he was completely under her spell and any connection briefly made with me was instantly forgotten as he slipped easily into his lifelong role of her Bully Boy. Ever the Enabler, only loyal to her. 
 And suddenly I wasn`t the 37 year old woman with a child and a house and a Husband.....I was the little girl who tore pages from her Bible because no matter how hard she tried she could not make either her Mom or Dad love her.

A week or so later, after having no contact with them, he must of been allowed home as I get a call from their landline and its him. He tries to reissue his warning about how I treat Mother but I am a little more collected and try not to be drawn into a row but do repeat that I felt I had done nothing wrong. He then takes a sledgehammer to the pieces of my heart he broke at the hospital. Exasperated I will not allow myself to be Gaslighted by Proxy  and no doubt with Mother standing right beside him listening to every word, he then tells me very matter of factly...


 "Well if you won`t hold to your Mother then I won`t want to see you and if that means that I won`t see my Grand Son then that`s how it will have to be"

I`ll never forget hearing those words, he obviously felt no more for my Son than he did for me. And that went home. I never felt quite the same about him after that. He`d rejected my lad, just like that, to appease her. Message understood. LOUD AND CLEAR.

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