Tuesday

An odd day today. Even The Dog thought so. She was unsettled and subdued. Didn’t want to stray far from home and balked at any sort of normal walk. Just did her business and headed home. Two thousand steps instead of the usual ten. Even though we were both in standard dog-walking attire she seemed to know something was up.

What was up was another stressful day. Lesley wanted to take a look at the ground floor room at The Home that had suddenly become available over the weekend before going over to see her dad and her sister for a meeting with a senior nurse from the Palliative Care team.

Lesley’s sister seemed not to understand how a room at The Home could suddenly become available and said she thought The Manager had been deliberately trying to mislead them when they were there last week. Well what on earth did she think had happened? How do rooms at homes that cater for the elderly, the infirm and those close to the end ever suddenly and unexpectedly become available?

Once again I was left struggling to comprehend how much effort must go into deliberately not seeing the bloody obvious.

The Dog and I stayed at home. I don’t know what she thought was going on as I rehearsed and re-rehearsed the eulogy to Mum that I hoped to be able to read tomorrow. The Vicar had warned me against doing the reading myself. Close family can get overcome by the emotion.

I’m determined not to be. Not again. I’d failed to be able to say anything when asked at my Dad’s funeral. I’d got a good joke prepared and it went to waste. The failure still plays on my mind.

No jokes this time. No wimping out either.

I ran through the pre-flight checks. The flowers were being prepared. The venue for the wake was confirmed and reconfirmed. My suit was a bit dusty – I hadn’t worn it since the last funeral – but it still fitted. The Dog got anxious when I tried it on. Another little insight into into her experience before she arrived here with us perhaps.

Shoes. I need to check my shoes. They hadn’t been worn since the last, well, you know, either.

Another eulogy rehearsal. A good one. I can get through it without a wobble of any sort now. I hope nobody cries when I’m reading it. But then again, I hope they all do.

A tie. I do have a black one. But I’m tempted to wear one of my Dad’s. I’ve got part of his police uniform. It’s a clip-on job designed not to make then vulnerable in a scuffle. I probably won’t wear it.

I tried phoning the Funeral Director but the call went to voicemail. I was hoping to be able to ask whether there was anything more that I needed to do, to worry about or be prepared for. I was hoping for them to say “Nothing. Just leave it to us!”. But I hate leaving voicemails at the best of times and this isn’t the best of times.

Another eulogy rehearsal. This one was witnessed by a wren in the garden. I haven’t seen a wren in ages. It flew off when I stumbled a bit.

Just as it was yesterday, radio silence on comms to Lesley during the day was maintained. I did want to know how her dad was after he’d collapsed yesterday though. He’d picked up again in the evening apparently. The hypothesis there was that he’d tired himself out talking to people at the day centre he hadn’t seen in three weeks. That could be a fair call as his breathlessness stops him from saying much more than a sentence at a time normally. I’m inclining more towards the problems caused by the probable advance of his mesothelioma into his spine that ruined Christmas and New Year for everyone.

But then people see what they want to see and I’m probably slightly guilty of that too. Just nowhere near as much as what I need to refer to as “other members of the family” if you know what I mean.

I just hoped, as Lesley does, that a medical professional would give an unequivocal recommendation that Dad can only get the care he needs in a home and that that needed to happen soon. I don’t think that that’s a decision a lay person can make. Not having that expert view is especially unhelpful for Lesley given the pressure to do otherwise from what I still need to refer to as “other members of the family”.

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