Saturday

Mum was in an unexpectedly good mood again today. I even managed to make her laugh a few times.

“Do you want one of your fruit jellies Mum?”

“Might as well…”

I took one too. And then another.

“I saw that!! Bloomin’ cheek!”

“Come on then! You have a second one to catch up!”

“No.”

“So you’re just going to sit there and make me feel bad then?”

She just laughed at me.

My first impression was that maybe she’d been through the miserable bit before I got there but then Juliette popped her head in Mum’s room as she went past.

“She’s been in a good mood today. All day.”

“Oh! Has she!?”

I still don’t get it. Perhaps the miserable bit was still to come and she was just doing all the usual phases but not in the right order. Or maybe not. That has happened before but who knows?

I began to suspect that she still hadn’t woken up properly from the last Sleepy phase. This should have been Day Two of her Sleepy/Active cycle. Then she removed the doubt.

“I feel SO tired.”

“Do you Mum? Should I read for a bit?”

“Yeah.”

One thing was for sure. She’d certainly started her hallucinations earlier than usual. There were only two Other People today and they appeared where Other People normally appear first – on the left side of her bed which is the one pushed up against the wall.

Early hallucinations tend to be indistinct. These two seemed to be and Mum looked confused.

“Who are they?” she asked me, “They look the same.”

“Which of you is which?” she asked them.

They didn’t answer.

Mum noticed someone passing in the corridor.

“Is that my dad?”

“No, that’s Eleanor from next door. She’s looking for something.”

“Oh. Well he was here earlier.”

“Was he? If I see him later I’ll tell him to pop in and see you.”

I thought I’d try something to get some idea of when Mum’s reality was.

“When you saw your dad earlier, was he going to work?”

She didn’t know.

“Come to think of it, he must be retired now. Was he going to the garden?”

She didn’t know that either.

“Is that him!?”

“No Mum, that’s Eleanor again. I think she’s lost one of her babies. That’s what she calls her teddy bears. Her room’s full of them.”

Eleanor’s ‘babies’ disappear regularly. They get put through the washing machine. Eleanor is always feeding them and their favourite food is Bourbon biscuits.

“Dad!?”

“No, it’s Eleanor again. She getting upset by the sound of it.”

Eleanor’s anxiety attacks don’t get bad until later in the day. Unfortunately, she heard me say her name that time. She came to Mum’s door.

“They’ve gone!! You’ve got to call the police!!”

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