US CLOSER TOGETHER
ON SONG: Top, Simon and his dad Ted singing on a drive. Above, Simon as a baby with parents Ted and Linda beautiful moments, too.” This process of discovering the man Ted was before his son knew him has proved rewarding in ways that Simon could not have expected. “I knew the basics of my dad’s life but I didn’t really know what made him tick,” he explains.
“My dad and I never talked about feelings. He was always there but I don’t feel I ever really knew him so it was amazing to hear all these people talk about him.
“When I started to track down people he knew so many of them would say to me: ‘He’s so kind, he would always look out for people.’ And the man he is now, when he has his rages, it’s a reminder for me that this is just a part of his life, it’s not him, it’s not who he really is.
“The real Ted, my dad, isn’t the angry guy with dementia lashing out, he’s the man who would always fight for what was right, who would always stick up for others.
“I feel I know him now better than I ever did before. When he’s kicking off I can breathe and just think: this is the illness, this is not him, he’s a good guy.” It has also led Simon to come to a revelation of his own. “This has been a wake-up call,” he says. “We’ve only got a finite time to be around our fathers. We need to make the most of it.
“It’s only when you realise things are not going to be around for ever that you wish you’d made more of them. We only have a small amount of time here so why waste that time fussing around with things that don’t actually matter?
“I think that’s what I’ve really learned from this whole thing – we haven’t got much time and we need to make every day count. I used to get bogged down with worrying that my job wasn’t good enough or my home wasn’t as nice as the next person’s and you know what? It doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t. So long as you’ve had a good day, that’s the main thing.”
One of the most affecting moments in the book comes late on after Ted’s diagnosis. The pair go for a walk and end up in the pub where the older man proceeds to wax lyrical about Simon and how proud he is of him, all while having no idea that the person he is talking to is in fact his son. If it serves as a rather beautiful testament to the power of paternal love, it is also a heartbreaking example of the cruelty of the disease.
Simon himself is candid about the struggle he and mum Linda have to cope with Ted during his bad moments – he has now moved back to the family home in Blackburn to help Linda care for Ted full-time – and he is passionate not only about raising awareness of the disease, but also about raising money for the Alzheimer’s Society.
“Coping with someone you love who has Alzheimer’s is a nightmare,” he says. “When dad was diagnosed it was very much: he’s got dementia and then that’s it, you’re left to deal with it. Thank God for the Alzheimer’s Society if they weren’t there I don’t know what we’d have done. We’d have sunk completely.
“One thing I feel very strongly about: I was talking to someone and I said, ‘Dad suffers from Alzheimer’s’ and they said, ‘You shouldn’t Daily Express Saturday April 7 2018 say “suffers”, you should say, he’s living with it.’ And I was like: ‘No, he’s actually suffering. He’s really suffering.’ And we’re suffering from it. We’re barely getting through each day. And there’s thousands of people like us, they’re not living with dementia, they’re suffering from it.
“There are good days but there are other days when the whole thing is just a living nightmare and that’s why the Alzheimer’s Society is so important – to help all those people who are suffering.”
ULTIMATELY, however, the book is about Simon discovering, or rediscovering, his father. As he writes in the introduction: “When I was a young kid I thought my dad was the greatest man in the world. I lost that feeling for a while. But now I can say that I’m the proudest man on the planet to have Ted McDermott as my father.”
You get the feeling that Ted himself might well say the same about his son.
To order The Songaminute Man by Simon McDermott, published by HQ at £16.99, call the Express Bookshop with your debit/credit card on 01872 562 310. Alternatively, send a cheque or PO made payable to Express Bookshop to: Songaminute Offer, PO Box 200, Falmouth, Cornwall, TR11 4WJ, or order online at expressbookshop.co.uk. UK delivery is free.