This is an extract from a letter I wrote to Dad's GP shortly after Christmas, and post for the record. It speaks for itself, although re-reading it now throws up other questions which I want to reflect on further:
The father I’ve always known is tidy and methodical and until about a year ago that was still true. Over the last 12 months there’s been a marked decline in his housekeeping skills. There’s untidiness as in leaving piles of papers on the floor - I do that! - and there’s chaos. A while ago Dad started to have a look through his financial affairs and spread papers over the dining room table. Fine, except that I observed this on one visit and on my next, some weeks later, those papers were still there – only they’d also spread onto chairs and the floor. There was another heap on the bottom of the stairs and another one again in the lounge. He sleeps in the single bedroom at the back of the house; that room was tidy, but on the double bed in the main bedroom were piles of clothes at various stages on the laundry cycle – needing to be washed, washed but not ironed, ironed and waiting to be put away. In the kitchen, bits of DIY and cleaning products were mixed up with food packets and drink bottles.
At Christmas this situation was visibly worse, so that on the double bed were not only piles of clothes but papers strewn on top of the clothes. In the dining room the ironing board was set up, not for ironing but as a work surface: on it were lying a ring binder, a light bulb, some opened mail, a couple of Christmas cards, as well as some ironed handkerchiefs. A number of plastic bags littered the floor. Two of the chairs in the lounge were strewn with papers, sheet music, videos, Christmas cards, newspapers, and packs of some denture care product. There was another pile of odds and ends at the foot of the stairs. My father does not live like this. It’s as if he starts a job, wanders off, forgets what he’s been doing, starts on something else and never returns to the original task or cleans up after himself.
On my arrival on Boxing Day I noticed a box of eggs on the stairs. They must have been there for at least three days and it didn’t seem to strike Dad that they belonged in the fridge. I opened the fridge only to find another box of eggs, a full half dozen, marked “best before Nov 26”. There was also a pack of sliced ham on top of the freezer, completely thawed, with an August sell-by: Dad had taken it out and forgotten about it, ditto a pack of sandwiches, visibly mouldy. I threw both in the dustbin, wondering what he might have done if I hadn’t called.
Washing up was piled in the sink, the water stone cold, but other dirty pots hadn’t made it that far and were still standing on the work top, among empty biscuit packets and other bits of packaging which he could have binned in a moment. One cereal bowl had its food residue caked on hard and must have escaped washing up for several days.
I’d bought him an M & S hamper for Christmas, which he’d opened and begun to sample. It included a small pudding, of which he’d eaten half and left the rest; the little bowl it had come in stood on the work top with a teaspoon stuck in it. There was a packet of biscuits which he’d opened but hadn’t transferred the contents to a tin, a cake in a cardboard packet which he’d undone and just left open, and a few other tins and jars from the hamper standing randomly on the work top, next to some sellotape and scissors from where he’d been wrapping small presents. There were more Christmas cards on top of the microwave, a pack he’d opened and begun to use. Also in the kitchen was a heap of laundry, pyjamas and a dressing gown, a roll of insulated tape, some Tippex ... you get the picture.
Next day the kitchen was pretty much as it had been 24 hours before, including the half-eaten Christmas pud with the spoon still stuck in it. Dad had run some water into the sink and put his used crocks in, but hadn’t done any washing up. He’d made no attempt to put the other things from the hamper away or cover up the cake and biscuits.
Not only is he not coping with his chores, he doesn’t notice that he’s not coping.
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