Friday

Mum had all the hallmarks of having just woken up today. She was still stiff and sore from a couple of immobile days.

Reggie said Mum had started accepting a drink this afternoon.

She was aware it was me there. She wasn’t really communicative yet. The only thing she said with any clarity was “Don’t leave me on me own!”

She had no idea that she didn’t have a visit yesterday. I didn’t want to challenge her memory or highlight that something she should have enjoyed had slipped past her so said…

“Sue and Den were here the other day…”

She said “Yeah” quite confidently but didn’t give away whether she actually remembered or not.

I reckoned that she’d probably be awake tomorrow and Sunday. Who knows after that. That could be it with this new compressed cycle. If you spent an hour with her you could observe her shifting through the gears and moving from one phase to the next in front of your eyes.

She did look incredibly frail today but she should pick up a bit by Sunday as she began to eat and drink ‘normally’ again.

I put the chances of Mum being awake for Sunday’s visitors at a good 60/40 at least.

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