Wednesday

We let The Dog choose the route for her main walk of the day. Unsurprisingly, she chose to go to the river and up towards the country park. The Himalayan Balsam and Greater Burdock have had a good year and are huge. Enormous swathes of pink and purple all the way along the path.

Having such a lengthy walk left me little time before having to head off for my appointment at the hospital. No time even for a drink. Just change and walk down to the station. There was a queue at the coffee shop so didn’t have time to wait before my train came so no drink there either. I just about had time to walk to the hospital so no time to buy anything at the station.

The hospital is vast and sprawling. I had to suppress my Inner Bloke and ask for directions. Twice. The blood test department was at the opposite end of the building. Obviously.

I had toyed with the idea of getting the train to The Home from there but I’d already done over 18,000 steps and knew there had to be another 5 or 6,000 in the village where Mum is. And I still hadn’t had a drink. That idea was promptly binned. Besides, that journey would have got me to The Home at tea time and I couldn’t face that fight again.

When I did get to The Home I found Mum progressing through the phases of her Sleepy/Active cycle more or less normally.

Yesterday’s unhappiness had got worse. It had gone from just Really Fed Up to Full-On Crying. She wanted to be allowed to leave, didn’t want to be left there, didn’t want to be left alone, didn’t see why I couldn’t stay there with her all the time and wanted to come home with me.

During the visit this developed into something I hadn’t heard before. I think she’d been talking about Uncle Tony and it sounded like she was being forced to go somewhere. “Don’t leave me here!” became “I don’t want to go!”. I told her she didn’t have to do anything she didn’t want to which seemed to calm her down.

Yesterday’s Uncommunicative had become Unintelligible. She was a lot more talkative but I could make very little of what she said out.

The only thing that didn’t change was Uncomfortable. The stiffness and soreness from having been immobile for 60-odd hours was still there.

Mum told me her dad had been there this morning. I was sent to find out where he’d got to. Unfortunately, Reggie was in the lounge and spotted me leaving Mum’s room. He told Eleanor, Audrey and Annie that their friend had come to see them so I couldn’t avoid going in there.

They were all fed up but Audrey was the most animated. She’d been in a foul mood. Shouting, swearing and throwing crockery. There were a couple of other carers in the lounge with Reggie. They were all taking the chance to update resident records. The looks on their faces as Audrey transformed into a cheery, delightful lady as I sat down next to her was a sight to behold.

Audrey’s beef today was with some of the other members of the yacht club and all of the members of the yacht club next door. I couldn’t work out exactly what had happened as Audrey was in such a hurry to tell me that her vocabulary couldn’t keep up. There were more made-up words than real ones a lot of the time.

Once again I had the distinct impression that a lot of this story was based on real events from her past.

When I did get back to Mum she told me she thought I’d gone home.

“Can you read to me?”

“Of course I can Mum.”

She didn’t interrupt today.

Although I deliberately avoided visiting at feeding time today I could tell that Mum had clearly had a reasonable amount to eat because the stomach ache struck. All the aunts and uncles got called for but the main focus today was Uncle Ern. And then her dad.

Overall, not the easiest of visits

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