Or that’s what it seems like, and of course the only occasion to wear one, as we get older is a funeral. This particularly celebratory event took place in a soulless chain hotel on the A34, Stratford Road, Monkspath, Shirley. – my father’s funeral wake.

Celebratory? Yes, emphatically. My Mother had died some eighteen months previously, and the 24 hour nursing costs for my Father were astronomical, so he became the second guest at a new nursing home in Monkspath. He tried to escape a couple of times, and whilst vascular dementia wasn’t diagnosed, I can now see that he was suffering it. He was lost and lonely, and I couldn’t/wouldn’t see him sufficiently often. Luckily my job was “flexible “, so I could always pinch time to visit every 3/4 weeks, but maybe not often enough.

The “wouldn’t” bit – distressing for me and him (in whichever way he was compos). Dressed in over-laundered shrunken clothes that weren’t his, without a conversation to his name, or mine for that matter, I had to question the value of his life there. For the last six months or so he was confined to bed (liquid cosh?), listening to daytime telly, being looked after by strangers, missing Ivy (I would like to think).

A happy release

One Sunday evening in January 1991, I received a phone call fro the Home saying “your Fathers breathing has altered”. “And…?”, I responded. Apparently it’s code for he’s dying, although that wasn’t explained. And, so he died in the early hours of the 21st. Alone, save for a nurse. Which was the reason we were so gathered.