islanded in a stream of stars

I'm so sorry to hear that your father is having such a hard time at the moment, and hope very much that things will get easier. And I hope that, unlike the Wendy Cope poem, the people who you love and who are suffering actually are suffering less than you and that the karmic exchange of angst is working - you suffer, so they don't have to. At the very least, it makes an enormous difference to know that someone cares.