I’m making amends for the hell I put my parents through

Her elderly father won’t leave the house, has he become institutionalised since lockdown? After years of rehab, Charlotte Cripps knows how that feels

(Illustration by Amara May)

Coronavirus? What coronavirus? It’s like Biarritz in Notting Hill Gate. The restaurants are all open and people are lunching outside like they are on the Riviera. They are squeezing on to tables, trying to eat seafood, with no room to swing a cat. It’s especially crowded where all the posh Italian restaurants are on Kensington Park Road – not that I’ve been inside. I’ve been waiting outside in my car doing spaghetti vongole drive-bys for my dad, who still won’t leave his house.

The restaurant owners have been bringing shots of espresso to my car window as I collect my dad’s takeaways. That’s how shattered I must look as I’m hunched over the car wheel. As my mum friend Mel always tells me: “Don’t ever sit down – it’s fatal – then you realise how tired you are.” She’s right.

I wait with the delivery motorbikes, just like an Uber Eats rider. Then I put my foot down to get it to him piping hot. My dad lives off the Upper Richmond Road West, but he fancies a good dish of pasta once a week from this top Italian near me. That’s all very well – I moved mountains for him during lockdown – but he’s got used to it. Now he’s overdosed on lockdown advice, and I’ve got the opposite problem: trying to get him out of the house.

He’s a bit black and white, like me – there’s no middle ground. I’m wondering if he’s become institutionalised like I was when I left rehab for the eighth time? I had missed so many major events when I finally re-emerged from the Wiltshire treatment centre in the late 1990s: there was a new Labour government, a band called the Spice Girls, and people were going on about something called the internet. And now my dad is missing out on a whole new era – the new normal.

He doesn’t own a face mask, and hasn’t yet had to navigate shopping in a one-way system or panicked when somebody coughs over his shoulder. He’s 87, but has set up his accountancy office in the dining room and is living as if he is in The Truman Show – like there is no world outside the walls of his house.

I thought he might have ventured out by now. At one point, he even blamed me for him having to stay in – as I insisted he follows government guidelines. That was when numbers of deaths were hitting 1,000 a day. He wanted to carry on taking the bus to his office. Now coronavirus terror has hit, and he’s too scared to go out.

According to my sister, I pulled a tablecloth off a dinner party table mid-meal – but I couldn’t understand why everybody was so frosty the next day. I thought I was having a whale of a time

There is no respite – I’m suffering from post-lockdown fatigue. I asked him to try on a face mask at home, but when I turned around he was wearing it like a blindfold. So I just keep going, I shop until I drop. I’m the long-suffering daughter doing his tri-weekly foods shops. Just as I’ve left the supermarket, he always calls me to say he forgot to mention random items like “game stuffing”, “horseradish sauce” and “oh some beers”.

He has no idea – he’s living in a bubble – so I just do it. I tell him the cut-off point for a big food shop online, but he will always call the next day to say he needs more milk, dishwasher tablets and some agave syrup when it’s too late to add it on.

This week, my car is having a service, and he just rang. He wants me to take an Uber over to him, with the two kids, his food shopping, some cash, and another takeaway – this time Chinese. I said: “Dad, this is crazy. Please just wait until I get my car back tomorrow.”

Maybe I’m more tolerant because I am making amends for the hell I put my parents through while in the depths of my addiction. At one point, my mother got me a food account at a local shop. I returned all the shopping for a cash refund – that’s how low I sank. And I got around all the “tough love” tips they picked up in Al-Anon – a support group for friends and families of alcoholics.

I eventually hit rock bottom and got clean and sober. I remember sending my mum out to do my food shopping straight after I returned from rehab. I was too terrified I would relapse if I left the house alone. I just couldn’t trust myself until I got a few weeks under my belt. I could have been buying butter one minute and the next, vodka. I had no choice when the obsession hit me – often out of the blue; it’s the nature of the beast.

And if you have one drink, all hell let’s loose. Next thing I would be in a blackout – according to my sister, I pulled a tablecloth off a dinner party table mid-meal – but I couldn’t understand why everybody was so frosty the next day. I thought I was having a whale of a time – when quite clearly drinking was ruining my life.

I remember my dad saying to me: “It’s all right for you. You don’t remember your addiction. You were out of it.” If only that were true. For me, it was like hell on earth as I was starving for substances 24 hours a day. It took a lot of work and time to break through into the better place – where I could safely say, “Just for today I won’t drink or use.”

Time whizzes past and I haven’t thought about a drink for 21 years – which is a miracle. I had to be pushed out of my comfort zone into the world again. “I will pick you up at 5pm,” I remember my mum telling me as she dropped me at an aftercare day programme to support me after rehab. I was still shaking like a leaf, not because I had the DTs but because I felt so vulnerable. I made it back into the real world. Perhaps that’s what my dad needs. Or actually, is he safer indoors?