This essay reflects on my late father, whom my children called BomPom and my mother called Pop, and how his final years first shaped my thinking about ageing, responsibility and the idea of choosing one’s own end. Bursting with energy, vociferous opinions, a demon on the dance floor, and a natural naturalist, he was a strange mix of unconventional generosity and narrow-mindedness – a born-and-bred, truly taught and unquestioning racist. He was also a deeply moral man who helped two divorcees and their six children when they had nowhere and no one, by giving them a home base and a family.
The church and the state gave these women no support. But my dad (and my mum) gave them a home, stability and belonging. We lived in a higgledy-piggledy farmhouse with hessian ceilings where rats thundered overhead each night.
We had an outside “long drop” toilet and three house servants – that strange contradiction of being average “Rhodesian” farmers. We had chickens, sheep, cattle, vegetables, fruit – enough to feed all of us, but we were not wealthy. But those eight people had their lives bettered, nurtured and nourished because of my dad.
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Fallible, explosive, moral, unlucky and generous – that was my father. He had his first stroke at the age of 66. He wasn’t dramatically paralysed or left unable to speak; he was simply left with a tiny bit less of himself.
These tiny events kept recurring – so mild they were almost unnoticeable. They kept happening. Hundreds of times.
His mind was unaffected, so he was truly appalled and ashamed as he lost everything that made him who he was. He loved to eat but would choke violently on crumbs. His ability to find words, form sentences and speak was eroded – slowly and savagely.
This man of loud, black-and-white opinions, who loved to argue and meander through histories, watched helplessly as he was excluded from each conversation until he became a mute bystander. He – whose idea of heaven was a four-hour walk with his dogs – began to lose his balance, falling, bruising, and cutting himself. He was a gentle and playful grandfather.
Back in the day he had been a Scout Master, and the inventiveness and honest simplicity needed when working with young people were part of him. I remember the bossiest man I knew – capable of titanic rages – allowing himself to be told where to sit, stand and crawl, and with endless patience and good humour meekly obeying his two-year-old grandson. But those same grandchildren who had once played with him found his diminished, slightly dribbling wreck repulsive just five years later.
He knew that. And he felt it deeply. As old age and weakness took complete control of his life, he became a helpless observer to his slow banishment from everything he cared about.
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