The Reluctant Carer: Dispatches from the edge of life

Lockdown has spawned some searingly honest accounts of life within our hospitals and residential care facilities. It’s a universally grim picture. In both the UK and Ireland, healthcare systems are on their knees. The State appears to be failing the elderly and most vulnerable, though most are quick to commend the tireless efforts of the medical professionals and caregivers who continue to go above and beyond.

We’re slower to champion, or even notice, those who provide unpaid care for elderly or disabled friends and family members. Carers UK estimates that 26 per cent of the UK population are carers. During the coronavirus pandemic, this looked like 13.6 million individuals bolstering the NHS by providing invaluable unpaid care. Most carers juggle these responsibilities alongside the everyday demands of family, relationships and career. Many didn’t sign up for the role. Like the self-christened author of this memoir, they are caring reluctantly. Caring often provokes mixed emotions. A carer may be glad to help a loved one, yet also exhausted and frustrated by how much caring demands of them. In this brave, unflinching and funny book, the Reluctant Carer shines a much-needed spotlight on these oft-forgotten heroes. It’s both a deeply upsetting and uplifting read.

The premise is a familiar one. Anyone who’s ever been a carer will find themselves laughing and squirming in empathy. The narrator is a 50-something man, recently divorced and unemployed. When his elderly father — a man with both an impressive list of ailments and a generous dose of curmudgeonliness — becomes too ill to manage alone, it falls upon the Reluctant Carer to take a massive one for the team. (His siblings are conveniently possessed of partners, children and proper careers). He returns to the family home, a move which proves both infantilising and deeply comforting. He also assumes responsibility for his even more elderly mother. She’s in decent physical shape, though exhibiting signs of early dementia. They have the same conversation most days, yet there’s a depth of affection between the two which I found incredibly moving. I’d like to have seen more of this relationship but it’s the father who dominates the narrative. Much of the book explores how the father-son relationship is affected when the carer becomes the cared for. I was in awe of the Carer who, aside from a few quite understandable outbursts, remained reasonably patient and fond of his parents throughout. I wouldn’t have lasted a week in the same circumstances.

The book charts a kind of endless Groundhog Day. The narrator’s life is subsumed by the task of keeping his parents alive. He’s able to snatch brief moments of respite but responsibilities at home mean he’s never able to fully relax. This resonated with what I’ve witnessed in other carers. The act of caring is more than a job. It’s a state of mind. As such, it’s impossible to ever switch off. The inevitability of death looms over the entire memoir and while the narrator never fully engages with the question of “after”, it’s implied in the way he writes about his parents with a mixture of love and exasperation that the future will bring both grief and — as honest carers often admit — a modicum of relief.

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The diary format, spanning the two years before Lockdown, reveals how wearyingly repetitive his life has become. The same fraught discussions about respite care and medication, TV volume and whether it’s okay to let an elderly diabetic exist on a diet of mostly biscuits, pepper the book from start to end. At times the narrator describes incidents so absurd they’re laughable. I particularly enjoyed his father’s Amazon addiction and the ongoing battle with central heating. At other points, particularly those involving physical care, the sense of strained dignity was so pronounced, that the book became quite difficult to read. Mostly, I just felt sympathetic. The caring experience is desperately hard for the carer and cared for. It felt like the narrator’s life had been put on pause. Though the book charts his journey through a momentous few years, his circumstances were largely unchanged. I did, however, feel that recording the minutiae of his parents’ last days allowed him to be fully present and this felt cathartic in its own way.

This is a troubling but important read; an honest, warts and all glimpse into the reality of unpaid caring. It left me full of respect for those who care and seething that the system isn’t giving them the support and encouragement they so obviously need.