Monday

“Hello Mum! It’s Nick.”

“Ooh! Hello Dear!”

“How are you doing?”

“Alright. Better now you’re here.”

I squeezed her hand.

“Ooh! You’re cold!”

“Yeah. It’s not very warm out.”

“Where’s Lesley?”

“She’s at home with The Dog. She’s been at her dad’s all day again. That’s why I’m so late.”

I explained how he’d got confused by his meds again, how we’d been looking for people to give him extra help in his home, how she’d introduced him to a couple of very experienced carers but wasn’t convinced he thinks he needs any extra help and how she had had to organise getting his drains jetted again. His soil stack runs down inside a box just inside his back door and waste water is seeping out into his kitchen and up out of the manhole outside the back door. The engineer found that the blockage was caused by a faulty drain section that was under next-door’s conservatory and not on his property.

“I’m not sure what we do about it because the neighbours don’t think they’ve got a problem. They won’t want to spend a fortune when it isn’t affecting them but his house stinks.”

“Oh blimey! You two have got enough to do without this”

We knew that. Lesley was having to bail on a lunch date with friends she’d known since school. One of them told her that we can’t keep going on like this.

“I know,” Lesley replied, “But what choice do we have? There’s nobody else.”

Mum chatted on for a while. She was unusually lucid today. The weather, The Dog, the residents and staff we could see and hear around us. All discussed with calm clarity.

“Could you do me a favour?”

“Of course Mum. What is it you want?”

“Could you sit me up a bit?”

I haven’t been told about her recent weigh-ins but she felt as light as a feather when I picked her up and lifted her up the bed.

“That’s better. I can see who I’m talking to now.”

We listened to a heated discussion brewing in the lounge. Audrey was building up to giving someone a right telling-off.

“Just what have you been doing all day!? It’s a complete waste of time and effort. I don’t know what they’re paying you but it’s too much. You’re absolutely useless…”

The tirade continued. It took me a minute or two to work out that she wasn’t grilling a member of staff. Her target was poor Eleanor.

We watched the night shift come on duty and take over from the day shift. All the staff waved at Mum and said hello to her as they went past. A cup of tea was delivered. We waited for it to cool down enough to be drinkable.

“They’re nice people here Mum”

“Yeah. They are.”

“Do you think it’s alright here?”

“It’s not alright anywhere. I just want to go home.”

I didn’t go through the usual argument about the first step on the route home being allowing the staff to get her out of bed, letting them sit her in the lounge for an hour and how her persistent refusal over the past year was going to have blocked that as a possibility.

We just sat in silence. She held my hand.

Then her grip on reality started to drift away. She spoke about the person in bed with her.

“Oh! I didn’t notice her before. Has she been there all day Mum?”

“Yeah”

Mum kept talking. Less clearly than she had earlier but just clearly enough for me to be able to make the right response now and then. She was still calm and in a good mood. Then she noticed how dark it was outside.

“You’re right. It has got dark but then then it is late now. I think I’d better go and get The Dog out for her last wee.”

“Alright”

I had to admit it felt a bit odd to get so little resistance when leaving.

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