Fear and loathing in CT

Iam approaching the Age of Fear. As one gets older, one’s thoughts are more frequently occupied by death. am worried that my family will be upset after driving all the way to the executor’s office, only to discover that I have left them two pairs of black jeans, a black overcoat, three half-written novels, two surfboards and 48 unpaid speeding tickets.

“What a waste of petrol,” I can hear my sister saying.

One also starts worrying about dread diseases. Prostate cancer is no fun at all, but then nor is having a doctor stick his finger up your bum to check your man gland. Can one do this sort of thing at home?

Is there even any point in spending most of the day rooting around for something one doesn’t know the first thing about?

“Ah, yes, that must be it. Roughly the size of a baseball. Nothing wrong there, then.”

Brain tumours concern me. I don’t get headaches but sometimes I have thoughts that I fear other people might not have. My ex-wife often said there was something wrong with me but I didn’t take this to heart because the female brain hardly sets the international standard for normality.

Everything we eat, drink, smoke and read is likely to give us cancer, so there’s no point in even worrying about that one.

With age come things that were never there before. Like grandchildren. And sudden stabbing pains in unfamiliar parts of the anatomy.

Of course, many South African suffer stabbing pains from actually being stabbed.

For me, the Age of Fear dawns when one’s parents begin hinting at moving in with one. Sickness, penury and unfulfilled dreams pale into insignificance when confronted with the prospect of mom and dad moving into the cottage. Cancer took care of mom, so it’s only dad I have to worry about now.

“Cottage? I don’t have a cottage.”

“So build one,” says dad. “I’ll pay for it.”

“But I’m renting. By the time the cottage is built, my lease will have expired.”

“Well, it’s about time you bought your own place.” “With a cottage?”

“What a good idea! A cottage will increase the value tremendously.”

“Not if you’re living in it.” My father is talking about cutting his workload in half when he turns 80 at the end of this year. I want to cut my workload in half right now and I’m a fraction of his age.

He works for himself but I’m not sure what it is that he does. Growing up, I recall him using phrases like, “load-bearing capacity”, “broad-flanged girders” and “this is the last time I pay your bail”.

My mother claimed her job was raising me and my sister. I told her once that she should have been fired and she called me a bastard ingrate and chased me around the house with a meat tenderiser.

I might be more open to the old curmudgeon living in a shed at the bottom of the garden if all I had to do was feed him and make sure he didn’t nick my credit card and sneak off to the pub. But he is far from helpless. Until fairly recently, he would go gliding on Saturdays. He’d strap himself into an aircraft with no engine and get yanked into the sky on a winch. Most Saturdays I need a winch just to get out of bed.

My father grasped the senselessness of working for a boss a long time ago. He always pretended to be happy for me whenever I got a job, but I could see the truth in his eyes. My son is making someone else rich. What a disappointment.

Now that I am unemployed he couldn’t be more proud. He is so proud that he won’t even lend me money.

Look, I don’t want to seem heartless.

We probably have a responsibility to look after our parents when they get old, even if we were born through an act of gross irresponsibility on their part. As distasteful as the thought may be, we only exist because our parents had unprotected sex when they were young and foolish and most probably drunk.

The hard truth is that we are among millions of accidents roaming the earth today.

George Bernard Shaw described the average American family as “an Augean stable so filthy that it would seem more hopeful to burn it down than to attempt to sweep it out”.

This is a fairly accurate representation of my own family, not to mention my house, and I need to get this across to my father before he moves south on the assumption that I will put up with his nonsense.

Eskimos have the right idea. The oldies go off and die in the snow. But it wouldn’t be that easy in Cape Town. He would have to shuffle off to the beach where some shiny-eyed God-botherer armed with blankets and food would come along and keep him alive for years.

Then the calls would start. “How come you never visit? After all I’ve done for you...”

Next thing, it’s twice a week down at Muizenberg feeding him puréed vegetables and wiping the sand out of his mouth.

Geronticide, children. Worth a thought.

We only exist because our parents had unprotected sex