Thursday

Given how she had been yesterday, I fully expected Mum to be sound asleep this afternoon.

But she wasn’t. She was still stuck in the no man’s land between Active and Sleepy. I hadn’t seen that happen before.

She had wriggled off her pillows and was lying across the bed with her knees against one bed rail and her back against the other. She fidgeted in slow motion all the time I was there.

Mum didn’t try and talk at all but she wasn’t totally unresponsive. She did consent to me reading to her and she did return a squeeze of her hand. To start with anyway.

It was all just pitiful.

On my way out I saw Glenys arrive to get the handover from Juliette and I stopped for a quick chat. I thought Mum had stopped yelling “NIIIIICK!!!” a long time ago but they both said she still does it. She’s been doing it a lot just recently. Has she been disturbed by the upcoming move? Possibly. Not that she’s been told anything about it directly of course.

Bibliography

Tales from the Parish: 31 humorous short stories about community, family and village life, set in the English countryside

Kindle Edition

by Stefania Hartley

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