Thursday

Mum was back in familiar territory today. She was very talkative and spoke more clearly than she’d done in ages. I was at least able to partially understand what or who she was talking about.

Uncle Eric got good mentions as did Uncles John, Harry, Tom and Aunt May. She also said something that I couldn’t make out that I had to check with her Mum. Also…

“I hope Aunt Phyll’s alright.”

“I’ll ring her when I get home Mum…”

“Good.”

And later…

“Can you get Barb over?”

“I’ll ring her when I get home Mum…”

“Good.”

She said that ‘The Children’ were coming tomorrow apparently. I didn’t know who she meant.

There was quite a long rambling tale that I couldn’t understand which ended with:

“But I’m not angry with Andrew about it”

“No Mum, I’m sure he didn’t mean it. No point being angry with him.”

Mum agreed. My brother hasn’t been mentioned in a long time.

After more largely indistinct rambling she said she was sorry about what happened today. I couldn’t tell what had been planned, who was involved or why it went wrong.

“I wouldn’t worry about it Mum. They were disappointed, obviously, but no-one was upset and nobody’s blaming you for it.”

She was reassured by that.

We had a spell where she was complaining about being hot again and she started trying, and fortunately failing, to undress herself. More reassurance needed…

“Don’t worry about that for the moment Mum. The Girls will be round in a minute to change you. They’ll sort all that out for you. But it’ll help if I flip your pillow over so you get a cool side.”

“Ooh, that’s nice. That’s much better!”

She’s barely got the strength to lift her head now.

Towards the end, the hallucinations started. A little boy appeared.

“Look at him! He’s got a tangerine!”

“Has he Mum? Oh, yeah, so he has!”

More children appeared. She had a chat with a little girl and then asked me if I could give her a lift home.

“We’ve had the dog in the back of the car Mum and it’s all muddy. Give me a couple of minutes to tidy up and then you can tell whoever here needs a lift to meet me in the car park.”

“In five minutes?”

“Yeah. Five minutes. Meanwhile, you try a get forty winks…”

“Alright…”

So this was all stuff I’d seen and heard before. We’d had many conversations like this and I knew how to respond. I felt a lot more comfortable about how Mum was. She was talkative, mildly paranoid but receptive to reassurance, a bit uncomfortable, increasingly fidgety and fussing with her bedclothes, hallucinating a bit…

I left with the distinct feeling she might be getting ready to go into another Sleepy phase.

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