Saturday

“I can’t understand how someone used the last of Dad’s milkshakes and didn’t tell me.”

“What it tells me is that even with a skilled carer, there isn’t space for one person to do everything that’s needed for him on their own. When Mum was in The Home, the most needy residents had two carers working together. It’s a lot safer and quicker.”

I don’t think Lesley is the one who needs convincing but I hope she’s adding this sort of thing to her memory bank for use in evidence when talking to her sister.

“The other problem with having people go into his home a few times a day is that it doesn’t cover the risk he’s at between visits”

I didn’t need to tell her that either.

Although he seemed better that he did yesterday he was still pitiful. He had to be bad if even I felt sorry for him.

He’s confused, embarrassed and utterly exhausted.

On the bright side he was less physically uncomfortable than he had been but that’s about all there is on the bright side for him.

Even his local pharmacy seemed to be conspiring against him. Lesley phoned them on our way over to make sure that the repeat prescription for the fortified milkshakes that she’d asked the GP surgery to send over yesterday afternoon had got to them. Yes, the prescription had arrived but no, they didn’t have any in stock.

I feel desperately sorry for Lesley. I hadn’t had to deal with anything like this with Mum.

Perhaps I’m easily triggered but the surreal conversations like those I had with my Mum have become more frequent.

“Are you ready for another cup of tea?”

“I wear this hat because I find that light too bright”

“I’ll get you another cup then”

He’s always said daft things. He’d half read a headline in the Mail, make up the other half and say something offensive. That was just his normal thing. But the surreal stuff is getting worse.

The wearing a hat indoors thing is also strange. He used to disparage his other son-in-law constantly for wearing a baseball cap indoors. Never to his face mind you. But Other Son-in-Law is from a country where it’s normal to that. That didn’t stop Lesley’s dad from saying it was  utterly ridiculous. Grown men removed their hats indoors. And now he wears one all the time too with no sense of the irony or the hypocrisy.

It’s just struck me that his sensitivity to light has become odd. He finds the main light in his living room too bright. He wouldn’t switch the Christmas lights on his tree on because he found them too bright. Yet he’ll happily leave all the lights in the house on all night when he goes to bed. His neighbours have begun to notice and ask questions.

I warned Lesley that she might have to cancel his trip to the day centre on Monday.

“We can’t have a volunteer driver let him in their own car when he’s in this state”

While Lesley assisted Dad on his trips to the bathroom, I managed the laundry loads that they generated. While the machine was running I looked into ways to counter some of Lesley’s sister’s wilder ideas.

The one that concerned me the most was caused by the notion that Dad’s current predicament wasn’t the condition itself but the way it was being treated. I’d overheard her saying that while she was here she would go to the pharmacy and get something different.

“You’ve got to stop her doing that! She could do him a real mischief if she does what she says she’s going to do!”

The real problem here is that I have a somewhat challenging relationship with Lesley’s sister. There was an argument between us before her mum died where I was, unusually, defending her dad. She demanded an apology. I told her to do one. It took more than 10 years for my name to reappear on Christmas cards from her. Even now, we can’t afford for her to suspect that I’ve had any input or involvement whatsoever into what she needs to be told.

There have been, and there undoubtedly will continue to be, a lot of conversations that start

“What’s a good way for you to tell your sister…”

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