Phillip Toledano: Days With My Father

Phillip Toledano: "My mum died suddenly on 4 September 2006. After she died, I realised how much she’d been shielding me from my father’s mental state. He doesn’t have Alzheimer’s, but he has no short-term memory and is often lost. I took him to her funeral, but when we got home he kept asking me every 15 minutes where my mother was. I had to explain over and over again that she had died. This was shocking news to him. Why had no one told him? Why hadn’t I taken him to the funeral? Why hadn’t he visited her in the hospital? He had no memory of these events. After a while I realised that I couldn’t keep telling him that his wife had died. He didn’t remember, and it was killing both of us to constantly re-live her death. I decided to tell him that she’d gone to Paris to take care of her brother, who was sick. And that’s where she is now. This is an ongoing record of my father and our relationship" Photograph: Phillip Toledano

I’ve always been amazed at my father’s love for my mother. It’s a constant force, like sunlight or gravity. He never stops talking about her: his gratitude for her love, for the relationship they had. For the way in which she was the glue for our little family. I loved her so much, but she drove me crazy. My hair was too short, my shirt too wrinkled, I wasn’t standing straight. She called me up once and told me not to go outside because it was dangerously windy! Now that she’s gone I realise that I spent a lifetime resisting her influence and now I miss it. I think she was right about almost everything… She would have been very happy to hear me say those words Photograph: Phillip Toledano

This is George. My dad never remembers her name so he calls her “the mutt”. He says she is just like a human being. He also thinks the mutt should be in the movies, because she’s so talented. Some of the genius tricks she performs are: eating; looking at us with a “human expression”; and lying on the carpet. My father will happily feed her his entire dinner – surreptitiously throwing bits of food on the floor (which would have horrified my mother) and laughing at the “intelligent” way George hurls herself at the scraps Photograph: Phillip Toledano

My father is very funny. I put these cookies on his chest and he said: “Look at my titties!” How can you not laugh? Photograph: Phillip Toledano

I bought one of my dad’s films the other day (he was an actor for a while). It’s a Charlie Chan detective story, shot in the 1930s. We watched it together this afternoon (that’s him on the right). I don’t think he’d seen it since it was made. He told me he was too young to grow the required pencil moustache, so he had to have it glued on. It’s extraordinary to see my dad not as my father but as a young man. An enormous ocean of possibility ahead of him. My mother and I, our lives together, all shrouded in the vast unknown Photograph: Phillip Toledano

I find these scraps of writing all over the house – they are a glimpse into his mind, the disquiet he tries to hide from me. Where is everybody? What is going on. How lost he feels Photograph: Phillip Toledano

My dad spends enormous amounts of time on the toilet. Because he has no short-term memory, he can be in there for hours at a time. It’s both heartbreaking and infuriating. He’ll do his business, and then as he’s putting on his trousers, say: “Wait a second – I have to go.” I’ll try and reason with him. I’ll explain that he’s been sitting on the toilet for at least an hour. But he just turns slowly and gives me this look, as though he can’t believe he’s fathered such a dim child Photograph: Phillip Toledano

My father often tells me that he wants to die. He says it’s time for him to go, that he’s been around too long. It’s odd, because part of me wants him to go, too. This is no life for him, living in the twilight of half memories. But he’s the only really close family I have left. I’m an only child – after him, that’s it. The other day when he said he wanted to die, I told him that the problem was that he had exercised his entire life and was in great shape. He looked at me, raised his finger, and said: “Next time around, I’m going to stay in bed!” Photograph: Phillip Toledano

So my dad died yesterday. I spent the whole night with him, holding his hand, listening to him breathe, wondering when it would be his last. He died in his bed, at home, with my wife Carla and me next to him. For the past three years I have been waiting, terrified he’d die when I was away. I didn’t want him to go on his own, surrounded by strangers or plugged into machines. I feel lucky to have had these last three years. To have left nothing unsaid. To know we loved each other nakedly, without embarrassment. To have felt his pride at my accomplishments. And to have discovered how funny he was. Just last week, on his 99th birthday, I asked him how old he thought he was. Grinning, he said: “Twenty-two and a half?” Now he’s gone to Paris to meet my mum Photograph: Phillip Toledano