Sunday

A second day with Lesley at home all day. A second day without constant bullying from her sister. Another lovely sunny day. Another proper walk with all three of us. The Dog was beginning to get her old bounce back.

“What do you fancy for dinner tonight?” I asked as we left home.

“Do you know what? I really fancy a proper Sunday roast.”

The last roast dinner we’d had had been Christmas Day.

“OK. I’ll do a run to Tesco and ‘ll stop in at The Home on the way. I’d like to see Audrey before she forgets who I am.”

I was only half way into my journey when Lesley phoned me.

“I made a mistake!”

She’d phoned her sister to find out how she was.

Her sister is wallowing. She’s sitting in Dad’s house surrounded by all his stuff. She claims not to understand how his TV works and is stuck watching re-runs of Heartbeat on the last channel he watched before leaving his home. She claims it to be the only home she’s ever known in spite of having left it to settle overseas a quarter of a century ago. It’s the only home she knows but when she went out for a walk in the village she didn’t know where to go. It’s been so long since she spent any decent amount of time there that she hardly knows the neighbours that did most for him. The ones she does know are avoided. She left the house, saw someone she thought she knew and immediately retreated indoors. She hasn’t kept up with any of the friends she had at school so can’t visit anyone. So she just sits in his house and wallows. Wallows and weeps. Some might say that she’s punishing herself on account of a guilty conscience caused by excluding her family from her life for a decade or more.

There are several lines of discussion that Lesley is having with her. The date of Dad’s funeral is one. That has to suit her flight home and her work schedule. But while the impact on her weekend retail job is of the utmost priority, any impact on Dad’s family Up North is not.

“I don’t know why they’d want to come anyway. I don’t know them. I haven’t seen them for 30 years.” she said.

A couple of them may be too frail to make the journey.

“The crematorium can stream the service. It would save Auntie M from having to endure the journey.”

“STREAM IT!!?? That’s disgusting! No, either they come or they don’t. And don’t ask me again.”

And then there’s the music. Lesley had made a couple of suggestions. They were rejected instantly.

“Well what hymns do you want?”

“I don’t know any.”

My visit to The Home was a brief one. Being a weekend, there were none of the admin team in and the nursing staff were all busy with residents. I went straight upstairs to see the ladies that I knew. Eleanor was happy complaining about something, Annie was asleep in the lounge in front of the telly but Audrey was missing.

“Where is she?” I asked the nurse.

“In bed.”

“What!? Still!?”

“Yeah. She’s struggling.”

 Bloody hell.

Author’s Note

My Mum was in a nursing home in the Thames Valley for a year and a half until she passed away in December 2024. My Father-in-law went into the same home the following January. But Lesley’s sister didn’t approve and made the situation so awkward that he had to be moved. The image is not of the home itself. I used AI to generate an image of a typical modern nursing home. Names and locations have been changed or hidden to protect the identities of those involved. Which, for the new home, is probably just as well.