Thursday

I got to The Home just in time to get an update from the day shift before they went home. Mum was following her standard schedule and I found her sound asleep and utterly unresponsive. The task for the visit was to find out when Mum went to sleep so I could gauge when she might wake up.

“She’s been OK today. Finished her breakfast. Had lunch too. She went to sleep during the afternoon.”

That tallied with the row of untouched drinks on her table. It looked like an afternoon’s worth.

Reggie joined us. He told me that Betty’s son had visited today and he’d spotted Mum as he went into his mum’s room.

“Is she still with us?” he’d asked.

Reggie admitted that he had to go in and have a closer look just to make sure.

“Yep, she’s still breathing.”

I didn’t admit to him that I’d been equally unsure.

He asked me how Lesley’s dad was.

“Not good. He’s had a bad day. He didn’t get dressed properly. The lady who does his housework found him wobbling around upstairs without a walking stick. She says he’s forgetting everything now. She also said that there was some laundry to be done and she didn’t have time to do it. It’s been dumped in the washing machine. That’ll be gruesome tomorrow.”

He won’t have an early visit from either carer tomorrow either. The shifts for their main jobs don’t fit so it’ll mean that Lesley will have to go. She took a sleeping tablet tonight and won’t be fit to drive tomorrow. As I’m not going to be visiting Mum – she’ll sleep all day tomorrow – I’ll drive her over.

While I was at The Home Lesley phoned her dad.

“How are you?”

“I’m fine. Everything’s fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. I’m fine.”

He always says that. He’s got no idea that we’ve been told different.

Bloody hell.

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