The Guardian of Memories

The Guardian of Memories

The skin around his hands is withered and paper-thin. There are moments when he is still himself. They are getting shorter and shorter. Today, he is ‘the other’, staring into the utilitarian grey of the hospital floor, talking about seeing his sister, his dead sister who apparently joined him at breakfast today. He hasn’t had any breakfast. He is skipping meals, growing weaker by the day. We come here daily to feed him, my mother and I, trying new things he still likes, from soups to ice creams. He tends to humour us, taking a few bites and chewing slowly, never finishing a full meal. We watch every mouthful, our eyes filling with panic, that we will not speak of in front of him. We plead with him: ‘One more, just one more spoon, please…’ At times, he smiles at the commotion we raise around him. At night, I wake up wondering if it’s a smile of appreciation at our urged gestures of our care, or reflective moments of self-awareness, acceptance of what is happening to him. Either way, we pretend that all will be well and that he will come home again once he is feeling better.

‘It’s warm today, Daddy. It’s sunny. How about we go for a walk in the garden?’ I propose, stifled by the hospital air.

‘What garden? There is no garden here. This is prison,’ he snaps angrily.

‘Look, there is a garden, just look outside your window.’ He turns now, blinking a few times in disbelief and shifts in his chair, finding no strength to get up on his own. I take his arm and slowly lead him out of the room. He can barely lift his feet, dragging them, one by one, in a painfully slow motion. The tears roll down my face, but thankfully, he cannot see them, too focused on moving his legs. My father doesn’t walk like that. My father's steps are decisive and strong. Only a year ago, we walked together across the moors, he climbed the rocky paths with surprising agility for his age.

‘I need to sit down,’ he says after barely a lap in the garden. It’s a small courtyard on the ward, with few trees and planters, bearing skeletons of flowers that once must have flourished in them.

‘Sit here.’ I steer him towards a wooden bench. He collapses onto it.

‘I am so weak. If I continue like this, I will die.’ It is the sombreness in the tone of his voice that makes me realise my real father has appeared.

‘You have to eat. You are not eating, and that’s why you have no strength. Promise me.’ He looks up and smiles, reaching for my hand.

‘Everyone has to die one day…’ he says pragmatically, just like he used to do, and I cannot withhold the tears anymore. He sees them falling to the ground. It makes it harder somehow knowing he is really here with me. It makes my upbeat reassurances sound out of tune. ‘Don’t be upset. Such is life. One must walk through the dark valleys to appreciate the bright views on the mountain tops,’ he repeats a saying I heard so many times in my youth. He squeezes my hand and laughs gently, just like he used to. ‘Look there, it is Margaret. She came to my room and stole my razor the other day.’ He points at a nurse, taking her for our cousin, making the moment of lucidity dissolve amidst the scattered thoughts.

Throughout his illness, we watched some memories vanish whilst he hung onto others. He would forget faces, often taking hospital staff for family members. There would always be a detail, hair colour, posture, laughter that would trigger a false memory. He would cite from forty years back, recalling his childhood home as the place where he lived with my mother, rather than our family house. Yet, there were things he managed to hang on to. Until the end, he recognised us, sometimes even recalling pieces of stories we told him the day before. He would always ask about the dog, even though he could not recall his name, demanding to see the pictures or small clips of Jack on my phone. Watching the simple joys of the creature, chasing a stick or swimming in the lake, would bring my dad immense pleasure, and became a way of distracting him when he was upset. I ended up recoding daily dog updates, just to hear his laughter.

We all wish for a peaceful death, falling asleep only to wake up in whatever we believe is at the other end. For him, it was not what happened. It traumatised us. Weeks later, my mother and I were packing his belongings into plastic bin bags, having to segregate his personal clothing, like undershirts and socks and heavily worn items, from those we wanted to donate to Alzheimer’s Society. Jack, the dog, stuck his snout into Dad’s hospital bag. When it caught the scent of my father, his tail started wagging vigorously.

‘I am sorry, he is not coming back…’ I said and Jack turned his head, like he understood, quick to lick the tear off my cheek. In total, there were four bags for charity, few watches and meticulously organised mail. Every bill or official letter that Dad received under this address, was organised in date order with annotations on whether things were paid or dealt with. It seemed, there was so little left of him. Bags of meaningless things.

At the bottom of his wardrobe, in the far corner, we found a cardboard box, worn on the edges and without a lid. It looked like it contained winter scarves, but underneath laid a surprise. The box was filled with old-fashioned paper bags from the photo shops branded with logos of Agfa and Kodak, in addition to sepia-coloured envelopes from before the war. All of them stuffed with photographs. Our family albums were in the living room, all our memories were neatly stacked in faux leather books that we never touched. Yet, these photographs were different. The photos of me and the boyfriends I had no wish to remember, the wedding photos of my brother and his ex-wife, a sore event in the lives of my parents, as the couple eloped. Baby Philip, their first grandchild and my brother’s son, who died as a baby. Photos of my grandfather, my father’s father, a man he resented all his life for beating him when he was a child. A worn image of Jewish relatives, the relation family wanted to keep hidden during the Nazi and then Russian occupation. Finally, photos from family events and holidays that never made a ‘cut’ into the official albums. A photo of Dad and I, both of us laughing when a sea wave bashed into us, the top of our heads cut off by a clumsy hand. A blurry picture of my mother from before they were married, her flirtatiously gazing into the camera he must have held. All these moments and all these people, the memories so easily discarded, moments that were not special, or not perfect – they were all kept here by him, in the confinement of the box.

‘I never knew he kept them…’ my mother says, stroking the photograph of them on the swings, the image overexposed, creating multiple versions of them suspended in the air. Somehow, their blurred laughter makes their joy seem more spontaneous, the image radiating with life and love.

I never thought of my father as someone sentimental. It wasn’t like him. It was not a version of him, I recognised, like the last version of him in the hospital.

‘We should make an album for these. Digitise them.’ I offer. ‘The album of memories we lost.’ I say, shielding the photographs from getting wet.