Saturday

Lesley’s sister went back home today. She left for the airport at noon-ish. Lesley had been given an exhaustive list of instructions by email over the previous 24 hours. A list of Do’s and Don’ts, Likes and Dislikes now that she had settled on how best to look after Dad properly and his condition was improving.

We got to him about an hour after she’d left.  He was sleeping in his armchair.

He had no idea how long he’d been asleep. The first thing he said was to ask whether his other daughter had got home safely.

“She’s only just gone. Probably isn’t even at the airport yet. She’ll have a long wait and the flight will be 10 hours or so.”

He didn’t look great.

“Are you alright? You don’t look comfortable. Are you in pain?”

“Yeah. Down here…”

He indicated hesitantly somewhere below his waistband. Or was it his groin? Hard to tell.

“How long have you had the pain?”

“Hours…”

“What!? You mean since before she left!?”

“Yeah…”

I left the room. There’s a reason I don’t play poker. I don’t have the face for it.

“I think I need to go to the loo.”

“Come on Dad. Let’s get you upstairs…”

In the week before Lesley’s sister arrived I’d spent many an hour sitting downstairs in Dad’s house listening to an elderly man straining and weeping in the bathroom as Lesley did her best to keep him clean and safe. It had all calmed down just before she arrived and we’d been assured he was back to ‘normal’.

Only he wasn’t. He was back to where he’d been over Christmas. In agony and exhausted.

Lesley put him to bed once that round of his ordeal was completed and cleaned up. He looked pitiful. As bad as I’d ever seen him.

“Bloody hell! He looks and sounds like my Mum did!”

We left him to sleep and took the dog out for the walk she’d been waiting for.

He was still sleeping when we got back. Lesley let him know we were in and got assurance that he was alright.

We left him to it until Lesley heard a noise and shot upstairs. Another trip to the bathroom.

“He’d tried to get there on his own. He’d forgotten we were still here.”

He got up again. The previous trip to the bathroom had been incomplete. By the time he got there he’d forgotten he needed to pee.

“You’ll never believe what I’ve just seen…” Lesley told me, “He went to pee, got a piece of toilet paper to dry himself off and before I could say anything he blew his nose on the same piece of toilet paper before throwing it in the loo!”

As the evening wore on it was obvious that plans were going to have to change. Despite assurances to the contrary, Dad wasn’t in any state to be left on his own overnight.

It was late. I got in the car to go home with The Dog. The dashboard lit up.

“This’ll be fun on the way home… I’ve only got one headlight working!”

Meanwhile, Lesley’s sister was on the plane home, basking in the knowledge that she’d done a better job than anyone else could possibly have done. She could also be certain that nobody would dare tell her otherwise.

Nobody ever has. It’s why she’s the way she is.

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