Lacuna

Lacuna, defined in the Oxford Dictionary as a Hiatus, blank, missing portion, empty part, seemed to be the picture of the world to J, whom on the death of his exhausted mother, becomes the sole carer of his aged father who is in an advanced state of Alzheimers, in a confused, agitated South London where mobile phones and iPods, both addictive and sedative, are background Muzak to more serious displays of road rage, street rage and drug activity. Encountering a Health Service whose professionals find it as difficult as him to reach down into the heart of this unseen, ungraspable disease he is forced to seek innovative ways of dealing with the daily problems. A chance meeting at his local pub provides him with an informal support group. Three men that he meets in the late evening several times a week become to him the Three Wise Men, affectionately abbreviated to TWM. ln the third year when his father takes a serious fall they enter into a world of medicine which is advanced and competent but where 'nursing' has become clerical rather than physical, and where 'care' has been marginalised by pseudo professionalism. Whilst grim duty never goes away what began as a five year retreat from Moscow becomes in part a rewarding internal Odyssey. A gradual retrospective view of his father's early imperceptible decline does bring a degree of understanding and the lifelong unbroken friendship between them is reconfirmed.

Born of Irish parents, SEAN RIAN has lived in London most of his life. Now retired and divorced, after intensive involvement throughout the years in construction, property and travel, his main reoccupations are serious reading and extensive travel.