CARE HOME (6)

Monday, July 29th, 2013

Whilst I found it very difficult to agree (because I know what I'm like), it was suggested recently that I deserve to be a person to whom nice things ought to happen. I'll grant you that, at the time this conversation occurred, I was in a pretty low place emotionally and it might just have been the sort of thing which needed to be said in order to buck me up a little, but it was a kindly thought and one which was gratefully received.

At least on the inside.

I probably just brushed it off when it was mentioned because I've seldom been very good at accepting a compliment (if that, indeed, is what  it was...?)

Of course, the horrifying reality of my actual life is that I know that things are, in fact, never going to get any better. I know almost certainly that they're just going to get worse and worse forever and ever and ever, but somehow I keep on battling on regardless and getting wearier and wearier and ever more depressed by the burden of it all.

Strangely enough, and for one, brief, glorious second, as we were bowling along in the car on Saturday, I actually genuinely forgot about it all.

Everything.

All of the hospitals and care homes and illness and everything.

For one shining moment, when mention was made in passing to what I'd been through in this past half year, I actually had to think for a second about what was being referred to, and it was a very beautiful moment which, of course, couldn't last.

Arriving home I checked my messages. One was one I'd failed to delete about a hospital visit being planned by mum's colleague, two were from mum in a flat panic about not hearing from my sister on the day she drove up (I was at work and then in a cafe with the subject of all that worry), one was wishing us a happy holiday, two were from a friend of mum's confused about where she now was, and another one was to tell me how pleased mum was that we'd chosen to add the extra day to our holiday.

Oh, and Happy Birthday, by the way... (Don't ask...!)

And so, after the slightly depressing process of returning to work after a week off, I reluctantly bit the bullet and went to visit mum on my way home.

Having managed to get into the building, which is no simple task, I went upstairs to find that she was in the dining room having her evening meal, so I went to wait in her room where my sister was lurking, so we were able to have a bit of a chat and an update of how things had progressed in my absence. She's off home on Thursday, once the plumber's been to sort out the flat and its many water-related problems, and then, I fear, the fun will really begin...

In between mum's meal and an interesting idea called "Sparkles" which gets the elderly folk to chat and reminisce (God alone knows what horrors she'll be dredging up and telling the world about...) we managed to have a twenty minute chat involving a minimal amount of manipulation and curmudgeonliness, and I got a birthday card (Don't ask!)

As the "Sparklers" were gathered, I found that I had twenty minutes to fill before I needed to head off and make my rendezvous at the station, so we sat in the car and moaned a lot at sis whilst we discussed some of the murkier areas of our family history which have begun to get stirred up recently due to the odd ill-thought-out comment that mum has made.

After that, I headed home (via the station) for an evening of tea and telly which finished (because I deserve nice things to happen to me) in me having a back spasm...

Reality really does bite, it seems, to welcome me back into its wicked web.