Thursday

The second of two days off visiting Mum. My feeling on Tuesday evening was that she was going to crash hard going into this Sleepy phase. It wasn’t going to be just one day asleep.

Lesley needed to be with her dad yesterday and today. Yesterday’s departure had been quite early so the main walk of the day was just me and The Dog. It’s far easier if I just let her decide where we’re going when Lesley isn’t with us now. Getting her to do the walk I want is pointless. It turns the walk into a two-hour session of stubbornness and bribery and we end up with a walk that neither of us enjoy. So instead of what used to be the standard Lesley-less Main Walk – long and muddy – we headed into the village centre. The Dog’s anxiety has been increasing with the frequency of Lesley’s trips to her dad and we had to go and find her. Once The Dog had satisfied herself that Lesley wasn’t at either the station or the supermarket we headed off to get wet and muddy.

Going through the village meant meeting people. The key ones today were people that knew what The Dog used to be like. When she first came out of rescue she was terrified of everything and everybody. If she did meet someone she thought she liked then she would jump all over them. She’d get over-excited and try to grab them with her mouth. If she didn’t like the look of them she’d try and scare them away. Today, she was perfect and kept all four feet on the ground when asking for some attention. I still find it odd how proud people are of being one of The Dog’s Chosen Ones when she goes up to them.

Lesley is struggling though. I think she thought that having her sister come from several time zones away to stay with Dad would give her some respite. Instead, it’s been worse than ever.

Our breakfasts are always accompanied by reminders from Alexa to do something for Dad. It’s easier than doing a written Note To Self for the next morning. Monday’s are especially bad because anything that gets noticed over the weekend when the services he needs are closed has to wait until Monday. On Monday just gone the list seemed endless. A GP appointment, optician, audiology, pharmacist, chiropodist, window cleaner and more. And that was before the things that Lesley’s sister thought needing doing.

To be fair, having her there has been positive. She’s been seeing things that nobody else gets to witness. At night especially. But the constant messages from her are driving Lesley round the bend. It was a barrage of instructions for everybody involved in taking care of Dad for the time she isn’t there to supervise us. Which is all the time. And I mean everybody. Lesley mostly, obviously, but the carers, the day centre. Even the GP and hospital didn’t escape her attention.

It may not have helped much but I said I thought Lesley ought to give her a bit of room to rant. Up until this week, Lesley’s sister had managed to not see how far and how fast Dad had declined. Now it was plain to see. Even she couldn’t not see it.

“You’ve had months if not years to get used to this. She’s got a week to catch up with all that shock, grief and frustration in one go. She’s clearly going to find that difficult and that’s why she’s acting the way she is. She’s made a conscious effort not to see what’s happening and to believe him when he says he’s fine. Now she’s let herself see the reality she’s panicked a bit. She needs time to adjust.”

All of a sudden, she’s seen the terrible efforts to cover up his inability to cope with everyday tasks and his unwillingness to follow instructions to do what’s best for him. She’s now seeing all his odd and unpleasant habits for the first time. We’ve known about them for years but she’s chosen not to. I think she’s found his lying to her the most difficult to cope with. Catching him chucking his fortified milkshake down the sink when she went upstairs and then him saying he hadn’t done it when it was all round the sink was a low point. One of many this week. She even let her frustration boil over at him.

But she’ll get used to it like we have.

She’s going to have to, isn’t she.

It’s all a bit sad really. For all involved. He’s declined beyond his ability to keep gaslighting his family about his infallibility. He might even be starting to realise that himself.

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