Grandma is turning 100 next February. Pretty cool, right?

Thoughts have naturally turned to having a birthday party to celebrate. I’m too tired and busy to add another project to my never-ending list so I have delegated this task to her only son, my father. I told him he needed to organise it, I wouldn’t be getting involved – my role being to keep his mother alive until then.

He said he would sort it out and I (naively) believed him. I thought preparations were being made in the background until I came down one evening to find grandma crying, holding the phone.

‘What’s wrong, grandma?‘

‘Your father has asked me to call the venue for my birthday to book it. And I can’t see the number.’ She said sniffling.

‘What?! Give me the phone, I’ll sort it out.‘ I said angrily.

He had one job. To make a phone call or send an email and book the local pub/cricket club down the road that grandma wanted. I fired off an angry text to tell him he was not to ask his blind 99-year-old mother to do any organising. He sent me a weak excuse and said he would be handling it from now on.

I didn’t believe that – I might be naive but not stupid – I decided to not get involved and see how seriously he took this (tiny) responsibility. He came over a few weeks ago to visit (thereby giving me even more work to do- his version of ‘help’ is extremely unhelpful) and to plan the party. He made a huge deal about going to the venue to make the reservation, triumphantly returning an hour later and announcing he’d paid the deposit and that the matter was now ‘sorted‘. No- I wasn’t letting him off the hook that easily.

‘Great, what are the food options like?’ I asked.

‘They have some.’ He answered, confidently.

‘I imagine they do. But we need to choose it. What are the menu options? And what about alcohol?’

‘We can bring our own I think.’ He said, sounding less confident.

‘Do they have a licence for that? I don’t think they’ll let you do that. And we can’t have a dry birthday party when wine is what grandma says has got her to this age. What is the seating like? What about music? What’s the capacity of the room? Have you started on a guest list? What about the cake?’ I asked rapidly.
He looked at me wide-eyed: ‘ Well … you’d better come with me next time to ask all these questions’.

There it was. The trap. The same one he set that got me in this situation in the first place. The ‘let it fail’ dilemma. Do I let this party be a disaster and grandma have a terrible 100th birthday or do I do what I said I wouldn’t and get involved? The same situation I wrestled with when it came to caring from grandma; do I leave and let her die, or do I stay? She’s clearly not her son’s problem, so what do I do? What would you have done? The answer is that you can’t possibly know until confronted with the situation. You can rationalise it all you like, but the reality is very different.

In the end, I did get involved and met the venue manager to ask all the questions that needed to be asked. I have now firmly left it with my father to fuck up or not. I will not be getting involved past this point. He has all the information he needs to do this one thing for his mother, while I do the rest.

I’m glad I went as my (French) mother provided much needed unintended comic relief by asking the bewildered venue manager about ‘ze traitor’ and when said traitor would be arriving on the day. In between fits of giggling, I quickly explained to him that ‘caterer’ in French is ‘traiteur’.

P.S: Is my boiling rage I feel towards my father coming through? Good. More on that here, if you’re interested.