Saturday

Another long and draining day with Lesley’s dad.

He’d reported that he was running out of incontinence pants. He does get them supplied by the palliative care team but they only do the sort with adhesive tabs that need a degree in origami and a level of dexterity that he no longer has to put on. So we get pull-ups for him.

But nowhere has the size he needs in stock. No problem. Order some online. But when the last lot got delivered he couldn’t get to the door in time so the delivery driver, thinking he was out, threw the box over his garden gate. He only knew they were there because a neighbour saw them get delivered. No problem. Boots do a click & collect service. They were supposed to have been ready to collect on Friday but they were late. And thus a mildly inconvenient Friday collection became a properly inconvenient Saturday collection.

His local branch of Boots is in the square of his nearest town. The Square is heaving on Saturdays so I couldn’t drop Lesley off and hover while she ran in to pick the boxes up. The nearest car park was heaving too. It wasn’t helped by the parking bays having been laid out when cars were half the size they are now.

These are all such minor things to deal with when looked at on their own. What counts though is how much of the space between the state we are in at that point and being unbearably stressed they take up. We don’t have much room in that gap and anything is significant.

Having collected and delivered his disposable underwear, sorted his meds for the coming week, fed him, done his laundry, walked The Dog and fed him again we were on our way and I realised I had barely said a word to him other than to ask if he was alright.

it was late and we were exhausted. Not for the first time this week I was seriously considering not visiting Mum.

We agreed that as we were passing the end of the road where The Home is on our way back to our home we’d take a chance on Mum not being awake. Lesley and The Dog would wait in the car park while I went in and showed my face rather than take my passengers home and head straight back out.

Mum was asleep when I got to her. If I persevered I could get a response but it would only be very brief. I breathed a sigh of relief and left.

It was all good. Apart from the fact that Eldest Sister and her two youngest were due to visit tomorrow and we’d run out of time and energy to do any shopping that is.

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