accident

I’m in a lunchtime meeting. My mobile goes off, my father’s dial on the screen. He and my mother have had a car accident on the Monbulk-Lilydale Road at the back of Mt Evelyn. Can I help? I’m in Collingwood and dependent on public transport; the answer is no.

He assures me they are unharmed. My mother also assures me they are only shaken, not hurt. She’s annoyed: she told my father to ring me at home, but not at work. I call a couple of times during the afternoon to check their progress getting home via tow truck, insurer and taxi.

I guess not to ring and tell my sister without knowing why; intuition. On my way home I ring again from Parliament Station. My mother asks if I’ve told my sister. No. Good, she says, but I can only guess why she’s happy that I didn’t call.

This morning I call my parents. They’re grumpy with each other. I call my sister. She says my parents are generally unhappy with each other. It’s not the first time she’s told me. My mother snaps at my father. Well, he does try the patience. I think this, don’t say it.

Our mother is active physically and intellectually, but my sister says she sees signs of dementia. Her own mother lost her mind in her eighties. There’s no history of dementia in my father’s family, but his physical decrepitude gathers momentum: he looks older every time I see him. He’s boring and bothersome. She’s heard his every story fifty times, no longer funny, no longer resembling the truth.

My mother impresses on me how pleased she is by my new job, that my father retired too soon, forsook his accountancy skills, supermarket specials his only interest for 25 years. She’s resentful that he’s had no purpose in life for so long. I think she’s been bitter since they married—his drinking, neglect of her with two small children, the friends she didn’t like, not one.

The companionship she might have expected in old age has presence without real substance.

Sixty-four years married. My sister says my mother bullies our father. He’s always provided, looked after her financially; she’s never worked. Since the drinking stopped he’s tried to please her, travels all over to find the books she loves. She reads literature, he reads rubbish. He pays the bills, does the shopping, organises all the practical external aspects of their life.

My good woman rings them to offer support. My mother admits to her that she bullies my father, her exact words. She won’t learn how to pay bills, get money from an ATM. It’s his purpose and it keeps him alive. She’s bullying him into staying alive as long as she can.

Whatever their wisdom, the aged become like children, but they are not children, can’t be told what to do, how to behave. My good woman thinks my mother has it right. My sister thinks my mother is making two people unhappy at the end of a long marriage. I don’t know what to make of it all, what’s right or wrong, what might or should be done or not done.

My good woman thinks they are lucky to have a son and daughter who will do their best to get it right. We might not get it right, but we will do our best. I think the time is now.