Saturday

Another day off. A proper one this time. No phone calls from hospitals or nurses or Social Services or carers about Lesley’s dad.

The Dog enjoyed her walk today having both of her Humans with her. It was hard to tell if she was just innately happy or whether there was a lot less stress in us for her to mirror back at us.

Christmas got packed up today. The trees and the lights got boxed up. Well, those that had been unpacked anyway. We’re normally sticklers for taking the decorations down on the 6th as per tradition. Not this year. We’d left them up because Christmas never seemed to have got itself going in this house and not all of them got put up. At least they were easier to put away this year as I hadn’t got around to putting the boxes back in the loft either.

Having a lighter caring load allowed time for some light admin. Time to clear down my email inboxes. There were the better part of a thousand unread. It was mostly rubbish but my OCD doesn’t allow me just select all the unread ones and delete them. I can delete all the alerts from WordPress that get sent when yet another hacking attempt gets blocked quite easily. The same goes for all the emails from the “You Too Could Sell Your Art And Make Millions!” gurus. The hard ones are those artist and gallery newsletters which I subscribe to for inspiration.

But they are inspiration for art I won’t be making until I get some headspace. I move them to their own folder to look at in detail later fully in the knowledge that I won’t. I haven’t done since Mum was taken to hospital.

The bright spot of the day was the shout of “Audrey’s out of hospital!” from the living room.

Lesley had known that I hadn’t dared to ask how my friend at The Home was doing so she asked Reggie for me.

I can’t remember the last time I was able to end a day without having to use the words

“Bloody hell”

I returned to my emails. There, from a couple of days ago, was a message from the Funeral Director asking a question about the arrangements for Mum. And the funeral is on Wednesday.

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