Sweets (Life with a nonagenarian – 2)

Rajendra Wijesinghe

“Where is my Dad? Is he still missing?” That was the regular question before going to the bed.

Read the Life with a nonagenarian – 1 here >>>

After dinner, he likes to have some sweets. A friend of mine who has a medical background asked me once whether “Have you done any test on diabetes prior to giving him sweets?”

“He is 95.  We should give him what he likes, not what he does not,” was my response.

He is used to hide sweets in his trouser pockets. Sometimes, ants are attracted to them. Skin of the aged people are vulnerable to ant bites. Once I noticed bleeding within his nails on both legs. I was panicked and hurriedly took him to the doctor, who advised me, “This was the third occasion that I noticed this type of a situation. This can happen due to ant bites. Surely, he would have dropped some food items around him which might have attract ants.”

The doctor would have been right. I noticed ants in and around his legs. Previously, I was of the opinion that ants gathered due to bleeding.

I hardly remember he told me that he was unable to attend to his father’s funeral since he was on relief work during worst floods in Ceylon’s history in North Central Province in 1950s. He was a dedicated civil servant in good olden days. Contrarily, what remains in him to date is not the satisfaction but the mental agony over the lapses on his part.

Very recently, I found several toffees inside his trouser pocket at the time of going to bed. As I took them out, he was with tears, “I kept them for my Dad. He likes sweets.”

(Cover photo: The protagonist reading an article written on him and trying to understand about whom it is written. )