I was in my early 20s, giddy to be home for Christmas, sitting in front of the fire. “What do you want for Christmas, Dad?” I asked. He lifted up his Zimmer frame. “I want to get rid of this thing,” he said. In his 17 years dealing with Parkinson’s disease, it was the only time I ever heard him complain.
Parkinson’s is a cruel illness. It affects the nervous system, making it difficult to walk, to talk. Little by little, it takes away. And with my father, there was a lot to take away.
He was a tall, handsome man – the disease never really took that away – and he was a superb golfer. At one stage, he played off two, and kept a low handicap until he became ill. Golf was a beautiful game, he told us, and had to be played beautifully. His first rule was rhythm. He made us practise to The Blue Danube, our down swing always on the first beat of the bar. It was when he started to have trouble with his golf that he guessed something was wrong.
He had a deep bass voice. He sang all the songs made famous by his great hero, the American singer, actor and civil rights activist Paul Robeson: Go Down Moses, Old Man River, Lindy Lou. One day, we noticed that he had stopped singing.
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He loved swimming. If he arrived home from a long summer’s day delivering bread and cakes from our bakery, and discovered we hadn’t been to the river, he’d say: “What? It’s a summer’s day and you haven’t been for a swim yet!” And then, rain or no rain, he’d bundle us all into the back of the bakery van and drive down to the Barrow, where we’d swim happily in the dusk and come home with the rising moon.
[ Our dad has Parkinson’s. We hope he is happy and feels our loveOpens in new window ]
He never stopped swimming, because the water held him up, eased his movement. Once when he and my mother arrived down to swim in Clashganny, the river line was blocked with dredging machines. My mother could have scrambled past but not my father. One of the operators said, half-joking, “Sure, you could sit in to the dredging bucket and we could swing you over.” And before my mother could say a word, he sat into the bucket, was swung out high over the river and landed safely on the other side. He loved that.
He was a master confectioner. His classic white-and-silver wedding cakes – iced with scrolls from the Book of Kells, no less – were almost too beautiful to eat. But in time, my mother had to take over the bakery, so he took over the bookkeeping. When his handwriting deteriorated, he bought a Remington typewriter with a smart tan-leather case. Oh how I coveted that typewriter – but I didn’t touch it, because it was his link with the world.
‘Sick and all though he was, he never stopped being our father. He loved all his children – including me, though I was probably the awkward one, moody, always asking questions’
Parkinson’s advanced, but he always tried to outwit it. Sometimes he would freeze and couldn’t move – particularly when he had to go through a doorway. He decided it was because he could see the doorway. So he tried walking backwards up the hall and backwards through the sittingroom door. It worked. Whenever he read about research into Parkinson’s, he would write away and offer himself as part of any trial. He never stopped hoping.
He was a homebird, so when I ran away from boarding school, he understood. He had done the same as a boy. My mother put her coat on to take me straight back to school, but I could hear him behind her saying: “Ah Mary, let her stay till the morning.” My mother said “No”. I know now she was right, but I loved him for wanting to let me stay.
Sick and all though he was, he never stopped being our father. He loved all his children – including me, though I was probably the awkward one, moody, always asking questions. I was allowed to mind him only once, when my mother was ill. Late into the night, as often happens with Parkinson’s, he suddenly got a period when he could talk fluently. And he told me about going to a special swimming place with his father when he was a boy, just the two of them. It was at the Rock of Silaire in Graignamanagh, where trees hung down over the river, creating a secret pool. Morning sun would pierce the leaves. “And the light was green,” he told me with a sense of marvel in his voice. “We swam around in the leaf-green light.”
[ Father’s Day: My father before he was a dadOpens in new window ]
Did he know that would be the last time he’d ever speak to me? Maybe. But that story of a boy’s special time with his father was a gift to me, the awkward child, and I cherish it.
They were two generous people, and they made the most of their lives. My mother created a patio garden in the sunniest corner of our yard, growing climber roses up the old stone walls. There my father sat in the afternoon with his Panama hat and his book, and the two of them had afternoon tea. People looking in when the big yard gate was open said it was like a little piece of Italy. It was her gift to him, one of the many they gave to one another and to us, of love, of loyalty, and of a determination to live life to its fullest, in sickness and in health.
