Friday

There had been a distinct ‘atmosphere’ at The Home when I’d arrived. Something had clearly happened. If it had involved Mum then I knew I would have been told and, as nobody had said anything, I knew it was none of my business. All the staff seemed shaken and dazed though.

I didn’t find out what it was until I got home.

It was late. I’d done the update for the family and was working through the bazillion emails in my inbox while I got my head ready to go to sleep. There was one from The Manager at The Home and it had been sent on Friday afternoon.

I now had an explanation for why the staff were all in such a state. The Home was going to close.

I’d known that there had been plans to re-develop the building at some point. I’d even met people who had worked at The Home when I was going through the tours of local homes last year who had left when the redevelopment plans first emerged. In fact one of the factors that pushed me towards The Home was all the good things that people who had worked there said about it.

I knew that the plans had been put on indefinite hold when I chose The Home for Mum. I assumed that The Pandemic had been the reason for the initial delay and that the continued government-fuelled financial turmoil had been the reason for the plans to remain on hold.

I had taken a chance on choosing The Home for Mum because it was close enough allow me to visit twice a day while she settled in, there was an understanding that if The Home was to close she would have a place at Beck House and, frankly, I didn’t think she’d survive long enough for the closure to be an issue.

But she had survived and now the closure was an issue.

The email was short and to the point as was The Manager’s style. He was simply giving the standard 28-days notice that The Home was closing and that, as had been promised when I first visited, residents would be transferred to another home nearby. As it happened, that home had been my second favourite when I was looking last year. It was a longer journey and I would have to cross the river to get there but it was a very nice place ad the staff were lovely people.

So, potentially unsettling for Mum, slightly inconvenient for me, very sad for the staff of course but no real biggie for us as a family.

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