Friday

I timed the visit perfectly today. Mum was just finishing a drink after her lunch.

“Iris!” her carer said “Your son’s here to see you!”

“Good”

Mum had finished a cup of soup, a pot of yoghurt and a cup of squash. I was surprised because when I arrived, Reggie told me he couldn’t wake her up enough to give her her morning meds. Mum was, I was told, so unresponsive that they thought she was unconscious. She’s gone down in the records as ‘Refused Meds’.

“So Mum, looks like you’ve had a decent lunch today then.”

“Haven’t had anything”

“Oh, OK”

She still wasn’t speaking very clearly yet but she was able to consent to being read to. Just a couple of chapters today.

I talked about having spoken to Sue yesterday. That didn’t register with her. She did react to the mention of seeing Curtis although I couldn’t say for certain whether that memory was from yesterday or just a general recollection that Sue’s dog is called Curtis.

There was a fair bit of moaning today but none of it was distinct enough for me to understand what she was unhappy about. I think she was just Non-Specifically Miserable. That’s fairly typical for the when she’s first waking up because that’s when she’s most aware of the state she’s in.

As well as being Non-Specifically Miserable she felt cold. And she kept saying she was cold. I checked her hands and feet and they felt warm. She had two blankets and the room was really hot. She wasn’t feverish but she did look very pale.

I read until Mum was motionless and unresponsive. My assumption that she’d gone to sleep was shown to be completely wrong when I stood up to leave and I got an unmistakable “And where do you think you’re going?” look.

I told Steve about the paleness and coldness on my way out. Juliette had reported something similar on May 8th but as Mum’s GP records are in the process of being transferred to a new GP they’re not available online yet and he can’t see what the doctor said at the time. They’ll do some more ‘observations’ and Steve emailed Mum’s current GP to see what happened on the 8th.

“And what about you Nick?” he said after he’d made some notes about Mum, “How are you?”.

“Y’know… OK, I suppose”

“Because you look really tired…”

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