I began this morning with a migraine, which is becoming increasingly familiar. I think poor sleep from worry and bad days with my mother precipitate these. Yesterday, trying on clothes in an unfamiliar mirror, I thought for the first time that I looked like someone of retirement age dealing on a daily basis with an insane person. I’m beginning to look grey with big circles round my eyes; whilst my weight has remained the same and I’m still working out, everything is hanging as if the stuffing has gone out of me. I still put on the slap and the heels every time we go to visit because I think my appearance remaining the same is as much part of the treatment as anything else but it’s getting harder to do it.
It seems that the other half is approaching some sort of crisis too, he had a complete memory lapse the week before Miniatura and has had gout so bad he was having difficulty walking and to be fair my patience and sympathy with this is not all it should be.
Him getting to a crisis and my mother dying in the same week would be the timing that is the secret of comedy but meanwhile yesterday was awful. My mother was having a poorly day, which for her means aggressive, heavy on the emotional blackmail, accusatory, excessively repetitive and hating everything and everyone. She was reasonably reasonable first thing but got worse as the day wore on. By afternoon she was insisting that the manageress of the care team come out to see her so she could complain in person about one of the carers. She rang the office to tell them, which precipitated a flurry of calls here there and everywhere. Fortunately the amount of water that the carers give her to drink ensures that she is frequently in the downstairs cloakroom and I get to speak to the carers to find out how she really is. I would say so far this is the only situation in which a care home might have an advantage because you could speak to the carers without the patient grabbing the phone.
Yesterday it was not possible for the manageress to attend my mother because she was attending someone who was actually dying. My mother insisted that she was dying too, she paid the bills, Good God what were they employed for, she would sack them all and so on. To me the emotional blackmail increased. Why wasn’t I there? I would have to live with my own conscience if I left her in the care of strangers and she died. Everyone would know what sort of wicked person would leave their own dying mother alone unable even to speak. Could I hear her she was barely able even to articulate her needs and dying dying I tell you (and she did tell me for another half hour.)
So we carried on until bedtime when the doctor summoned by the carer arrived, gave nothing but reassurance and prescribed an early night.
This morning, bright as a button, my mother can remember nothing of yesterday at all. I made the right decision not to go, although, of course, the day could come when the decision not to give in to the demands of a demented woman is not the right decision.
The week before Miniatura my other half, noticing my neck stretcher (which is normally in its box) asked what it was and we discussed it for ten minutes or so. The following day we had an identical conversation. I asked if he had no recall of the previous day’s conversation. He said of course he did but that night found something on television that was more interesting than going to the pub for the first night in 48 years.
Have you watched any television drama where the main theme of the plot is repeated in macro elsewhere in the action, just in case you missed the point?
I haven’t missed the point at all, I’m just waiting for the denouement.
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