Thursday

I was expecting this afternoon’s visit to be horrendous given Mum’s trajectory over the past couple of days.

It wasn’t.

She was pretty mellow. Calm, comfortable, chatty and in good spirits. So whether this was just a pause on the way up to peak agitation or the peak was short lived and I’d missed it I didn’t know. I’d find that out tomorrow I guess.

She accepted a drink without protest and tucked in to the Maltesers. When I say ‘tucked in’, she had 3. But that’s a PB for her.

“Here, mum, there’s not many of these Maltesers left. Have you got mice in here?”

“Ha! No! You’ve eaten them!”

In fact there was a lot of laughter. She told me quite a few stories that made her laugh. Many of them were about dad and he featured more in this conversation than he’s ever done previously. She was also talking about an aunt (couldn’t tell you who it was).

“I don’t know what she was like when she was younger, Mum, but I always thought she was a right misery”

“I’ll tell her you said that!”

I told her about my day. How I’d been given a series of vital jobs by Lesley – fixing the khazi that wasn’t flushing properly, replacing a washer on the garden tap among them.

“So I got loads done and all to the satisfaction of Her Ladyship”

“That’s a first!”

“Don’t worry, I don’t intend to make a habit of it. Next job will be to fix Lesley’s dad’s washing machine.”

“Oh blimey. He’s a right pain in the backside.”

The conversation did take a brief turn towards her leaving but I reminded her that she hadn’t had all her meds yet and that it would be a couple of hours before Glenys came round with them. She shrugged in resignation and I left to doze off with Brother Cadfael.

Bibliography

Brother Cadfael: A BBC Radio Collection of Three Full-Cast Dramatisations

Audible Audiobook – Original recording

Author’s Note

My Mum is in a nursing home in a small village in the Thames Valley. The photo is not of the home. I used an AI image generator to give the reader some idea of the home she’s in.

All, some or maybe even none (you’ll never know!) of the names have been changed to protect privacy and hide real identities. If you think you recognise someone then let me know and I’ll edit the post or remove it entirely