Saturday

Yet another long day for Lesley with yet another visit to her dad. I’ve been saying that a lot recently.

While she was out, The Dog took me on a long and muddy walk. We both got soaked. The rain was torrential. It’s supposed to be July but we got cold and wet. But it felt good that The Dog was choosing to go on a longer walk. We’d been wondering whether she was carrying, and hiding an injury to her left front leg. Sometimes she limps slightly and sometimes avoids putting her full weight on it. And when Lesley’s been at her dad’s this week The Dog has chosen a shorter walk. I can’t work out what or where the problem is and she won’t let me examine her. There’s no point taking her to a Vet. As good as her Vet is, there’s even less chance that The Dog will let her examine her.

When I got to Mum I found she was starting to come out of her Sleepy & Unresponsive phase. Her Sleepy/Active cycles are normally seven days but the last one was only five. That’s only a concern if she keeps it up. She seems to be just about surviving on a cycle where she doesn’t eat or drink properly on two days out of every seven. If that proportion goes up to not eating or drinking enough on two days out of every five then that can’t be good.

Unlike the first day of the last cycle, Mum wasn’t obviously miserable this time around. She was peaceful and calm. Or maybe she was just resigned to her lot. All she wanted was to lie there quietly while I held her hand and read to her. Her speech was unusually clear for the first day of a cycle but the only words she said were “Don’t leave me.”

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