The days are long in Dad's house in the last year of his life. He is mostly asleep in a hospital bed in the corner of the room, while I sit quietly on the sofa hoping he sleeps a little longer. I sit watching him, worrying he's stopped breathing, listening to the radio playing pop songs that transform the room into a time machine. Catch a bright star and place it on your forehead, T Rex's Ride a White Swan transports me back to 1970, watching Top of the Pops in this room.
At the age of 92, bedbound, lost in dementia land and not really Dad any more, he likes to look through cutlery. He points to my mother's cabinet of curiosities and asks if we can look through the drawers and then he sits up in bed looking through corkscrews, forks and spoons. There are silver teaspoons, sewing hooks, cigarette holders and caddy spoons.
Seeing him enchanted by these copper and silver treasures is like watching a child, lost in wonder. For now, he is a junk man again, just for a fleeting moment, enough to make me cry. Suddenly, the junk shop fades away and we're in the waiting room at a train station, but we're not sure where we're going.
My dad is anxious and doesn't want to be here. He can't face going on a journey. The station is busy but it feels like we're in a limbo, trapped between memories and reality, with the sounds and sights of life continuing around us.
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