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melting but not down

Saturday 17 October 2009

Moving on

I went to see a third nursing home on Thursday. Fairly new, purpose built, ticked ALL the boxes. Only one free room, with the same number as mum's home address - meant to be! En-suite toilet and wash basin, lovely view from the window onto this courtyard:She should be moving in on Monday or soon after - just waiting for the home to obtain a special 'alarmed' mattress that senses when mum gets up in the night and alerts the staff.

Visited mum today with lovely daughter and told her the plan. She didn't remember the home's representative coming to assess her yesterday but didn't seem distressed. That may be just because she's so weak. Its as though she's slowly disappearing, shrinking, losing her memory - I have to tell her every day that her sisters and brother have died. She looks so frail and vulnerable. I am desperately sorry for her. All the difficult years in our relationship are melting away, unimportant against the closeness we have now. I hope it lasts until the end.

4 comments:

Emily said...

I'm hoping the move goes easily, for both your sakes...but what has happened to dim her light so? A short while ago she was energetically castigating you for all sorts of imagined slights, and now... But I know what you mean, about the difficult years melting away. Strange, isn't it?

Clippy Mat said...

I hope so too Lily. I'm sure it will. There's a special kind of harmony, if that's the right word, that comes at the end.
hugs,
:-)

rilera said...

It looks like a nice place. I hope your mom can regain some of her strength.

I found that it was easier not to tell Mom about those who had passed away. It was too painful to watch her relive that pain over and over. I became really good at fibbing, I'm sorry to say.

Lily said...

I was wondering about mum's new passivity, I know they put her on some anxiolytics again a while ago, perhaps she's still on them and that's why she's not getting agitated. Most likely though that a combination of not eating very much at all and poor memory means that she's too weak to have a go and/or doesn't remember why she was mad at me in the first place!