Sunday

Reggie confirmed that Mum had been asleep all day yesterday as I emerged from the lift at The Home. He also told me that when he saw her this morning he thought she’d been crying. Being miserable is usual for Day One Awake so I wasn’t surprised to hear that. Mum didn’t say much during the visit – also not unusual – but she did say that she hadn’t seen her dad today. He normally comes “at lunchtime” but as he hadn’t shown up she knew he was dead.

“Dead Mum!? How do you know that? Who told you?”

“Don’t know”

“Well I haven’t heard that. True, I haven’t seen him today myself but he must be around somewhere. I’ll tell Reggie to keep an eye out and when he sees him he can tell him to come upstairs to see you. How does that sound?”

She nodded her acceptance.

Instead of asking me to read to her she asked for the radio. I couldn’t make out what she asked for so what she got was Brother Cadfael.

Al brought us in some tea and biscuits so I switched chairs and she started panicking.

“Why are you going!? Why!?”

“I’m not Mum. I’m going to sit in the armchair so we can have the table next to the bed.”

“Oh”

She wasn’t interested in talking apart from the occasional indistinct wibble so she just held my hand, drank her tea and dozed on and off while we listened to the ‘radio’.

All fairly standard for Day One.

Bibliography

Brother Cadfael: A BBC Radio Collection of Three Full-Cast Dramatisations

Audible Audiobook – Original recording

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