Jo Thomas, 56, will never forget watching her father slowly succumb to a terminal illness
WORDS: JO THOMAS. PHOTO (JO NOW): GEMMA GRIFFITHS PHOTOGRAPHY
It all began, and ended, with a Chinese takeaway. It has always been the feast of choice for celebrations, birthdays and anniversaries in our house. But a surprise midweek takeaway one night in 1982 seemed to change all of that.
I was 14 when my mum Cynthia told me my dad Terry had a terminal illness as I sat in the front seat of the car, clutching a box of warm Chinese takeaway, desperate to dive into the sweet-and-sour pork balls as they began to make fatty stains on their paper bag.
Mum explained that Dad’s symptoms had begun with a tingling sensation in his mouth and a tightness in his throat in the evenings. He’d begun sucking throat lozenges, but they’d noticed something more was wrong when they’d visited me in hospital a few months earlier when I’d had my tonsils out and Dad had tripped over the end of my bed. ‘He’s been unsteady on his feet for a while,’ Mum explained as she continued to drive. She also told me that one time, a taxi driver in London mistook him for being drunk, leaving him stumbling backwards on to the pavement as he drove away, my dad unable to keep his balance.
So they’d gone for tests, and now Mum was telling me the results as I was carrying the steaming, greasy takeaway on my lap. Dad had motor neurone disease.
I remember saying, ‘Yeah, but he’s not going to die or anything, is he?’ She paused, only for a moment, turning out of the junction, looking at the traffic ahead and saying steadily, ‘Well, when people are ill they don’t usually live as long as healthy people.’ My mum was just 47, my dad 52. She didn’t tell me that the life expectancy of someone with MND is two years, just that we’d need to make adjustments in the future and take each day as it comes. It was reassuring, pragmatic and I will always be grateful for how well my mum delivered the worst news possible, in the best way she could, with a Chinese takeaway on my lap.
And that’s what we did, me, my mum, my dad and my older brother Richard, then 17 – we took each adjustment as it came. First was a walking stick, then as Dad deteriorated more a walker on wheels, a wheelchair, an electric wheelchair and finally a fully supporting wheelchair. But the worse Dad got, the closer we all became, and the one thing that seemed to be the glue in that tight unit was Dad’s wicked sense of humour. He was a quiet man
