Sunday

Eldest Sister was on the hook for today’s visit. Over the past few days the list of people she was bringing with her had grown. Daughter and Number Two Son are regulars and go without saying. The two added at the last minute were a surprise. Number One Son and his wife were coming for the first time since their wedding. In fact, I think this was going to be The New Wife’s first encounter with any of the extended family.

This caused some angst here I have to admit. The New Wife is nervous with dogs and the fear was that Our Hound would react badly to someone flinching. The idea had been that Lesley would take The Dog to her dad’s for The New Wife’s first visit but she was stuck without a car – she calls my car The Tank and won’t drive it – we’d have to manage as best we could.

The factors in our favour were that The New Wife would be coming in as part of a group that The Dog knew well and was very comfortable with plus The Dog had been given a hard workout yesterday so would be tired and calm.

The factor not in our favour was Lesley’s nervousness. The Dog is highly attuned to our emotions and if she sensed our fear then she’d sense a threat and react accordingly.

As it turned out, The Dog amazed everyone and was perfectly behaved the entire time. So proud of her.

Over lunch they recounted the highlights of their visit and it seemed to be as good a visit as anyone’s had for absolutely ages. Mum had been awake and alert, recognised her granddaughter straight away and had been pleased to meet the New Wife. She spoke clearly enough for them to understand most of what she said and was laughing and joking with them.  She called Eldest Sister’s Number Two Son a “cheeky devil” and asked about Brother and his youngest. She talked about where she was and explained that she was near the river. I was surprised that she’d been able to retain that amount of detail.

I don’t know how the subject came up but she told them how if someone she didn’t want to speak to came to see her then she would pretend to be asleep. I’d seen her do that on several occasions but for her to openly admit to doing it was interesting.

Another highlight for them was that they managed to get Mum to drink an entire milkshake which was a first for them.

After a while, Mum told them it was time for them to leave.

So they did.

They were delighted with how the visit had gone and I was delighted for them. They’d come a long way and had had a couple of visits where they’d watched Mum sleeping recently. I was pleased that they’d all enjoyed their lunch especially as I’d started cooking at 7am.

When they’d all gone, I went back to bed for a couple of hours.

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