Sorry for the pause, nothing untoward, I am simply heaving with cold.
I knew it was going to occur when the OH sat sneezing in a typically unrestrained manner. He says he is paralysed when he sneezes, even though the box of tissues is proffered 2cm from his hand and there is a good ten second interval between the indrawn breath and the – wait for it – wait for it – wait for it………….oh no he isn’
WHOOSHU!
So it’s a foregone conclusion really, I will catch it. I did manage, thank goodness, to get the moulds made and yes that should have happened in January. Then an awful thing occurred. I sent off for eyes to my eye man only to discover that he had died in 2014, quite suddenly of a heart attack at only 57. I cannot find anyone in the whole Internet to replace him because there is no one else who can make hollow blown glass eyes so small, so well, so absolutely perfectly. If you’ve got one of the dolls with those eyes in, which has been all of them for the last twenty years, hang on to that because there won’t be another. I have found people making solid small eyes and I’ll use them but they won’t be the same.
Along the same lines as Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi, my mother constantly says how happy she is in her house and how much she likes all the carers. This is a slightly different tune from the one she was humming when she refused seventeen carers, pushing several of them backwards out of the front door on to a concrete slope. At one point I was considering having a trampoline fitted right there. However the manageress of the care home rang me, having received the form and I feel much happier. Her attitude is everything it should be and her enthusiasm for the job is apparent.
As a new customer of the world of Care, I would have to say the job has been a surprise at every turn. Whilst I was expecting to find a range of abilities, as you would in any job, because obviously people learn and accumulate skill, the level of dedication has been wonderful. I consider this, from my outside point of view, to be one of those self-selecting jobs; if it isn’t for you I think you would find out fairly rapidly. What has been so amazing is the number of people working in Care because they really do care and when they do, it shines out like a beacon so the recipient of the care can see it too.
Among the various positive pointers that we might be moving in the next right direction, is the news that my mother’s own doctor is the doctor for this care home and visits every week. I have no doubt that my mother will be overjoyed when I tell her. I am saving this piece of good news because I thought that the information that there was a place for her and that the room she will occupy definitely has en-suite facilities, which I consider a necessity, was almost trumped by the information that her room will be redecorated for her to her own specifications and she can take her own furniture. This is handy because she had already picked out a massive bust that sits on a windowsill to take, in between protestations that she wasn’t going to go.
So for the next few weeks, until after the show, having done the groundwork, I will leave things as they are, just mentioning positive things about the care home occasionally.
I am still worried sick, and I am sick, sneezing and ill and unable to digest anything at all without coughing violently, not helped by the OH shouting at me to go to the doctors, when I cough during his TV programme. But this is one of those colds where if you suppress the cough, you just end up being sick, so you might as well cough, so I do.
On the other hand the OH is having a scan tomorrow. If it turns up nothing at all, you can expect radio silence for a while, as I thrash around in the slough of despond. He is planning to go the France three days after my mother goes into the care home to stand on the battlefield where his teenage uncle died exactly a hundred years ago. He has sent for a new driving licence and expects me to go with him. I believe my duty of care is to the living at that point and was planning to visit my mother every day as she settles in, while clearing out her house to sell it. Quite how the OH is planning to finance this expedition is not clear.
Standing on the Somme a hundred years ago was not a thing that carried with it a very certain future. It’s quite something, hoping for news, hoping for the best, thinking it might be alright if you can just get through the next few weeks and wondering if you are up to it. The last four years have given me cause to have great empathy for those teenage soldiers, on both sides. They were so young and so innocent, so much was expected of them and they were just kids.
At least I’m fighting my battles in maturity, with experience and information. The stress that is depleting my immune system, of course, is that I cannot fight all my mother’s battles for her. Seeing a clear path which has proved optimal for a sick person and being unable to continue on it for lack of funds is the source of immense stress. There is no use getting swept along in the Big Yellow Taxi with my mother; I knew what we had long before it was gone, as I gave up all my inheritance to obtain it – I still think it was a good bargain. In order to help my mother I am going to have to get my head round the fact that she is going to have to go into a care home and that it will be wonderful because we have to go over the top into unknown territory and I have to carry her with me convincingly.
On one hand the OH and the slough of despond, on the other my mother hiding in her trench. If I can get a little lamp lit to illuminate reality, perhaps I can hold it up so we can see.
I just have to remember that it’s the dark that is frightening, not the light.
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Dear me this is a bit gloomy; I’ll try to be more cheerful next time.