The second in command who said it was going to get harder from now on was right on the money. On Monday night my mother rang late and demented to insist she was dying and I had to go immediately. I replied that I was not going to drive through the night in icy conditions but I would come the following day, Tuesday. She shouted something and said ‘Bring your night attire you have to stay.’
My trouble radar had already been working. Usually I do the shopping on Tuesday but this week for some reason I just knew I had to do it on Monday. I got out and about to all the different shops. In the car park of the big supermarket, looking up, I had noticed a small circular rainbow in a cloud near the lowering sun. It was as beautiful as it was ominous, caused by ice crystals splitting the sunlight. When I got home after I’d cleared our fridge for the cold groceries and filled the hall with provisions I found the plastic car cover which was deployed after the other half came back from the pub. Then I washed and set my hair and that was the day gone.
It was still very frosty in the morning, so I left the cover on while I loaded the boot. I also had sent for a special offer of boxes of chocolates from a shopping channel to provide Christmas presents for the carers. We did this last year. Clients are not allowed to give presents of value greater than £5 to carers but the chocolates on special offer are less than half price so that boxes which would cost £12 in the shops work out at £5 each. I also got gift bags last year and my mother wrote the labels, though I don’t think she’ll be able to do that this year. There were four of these giant boxes to cram in the boot. It always is overflowing, every week, no wonder the patient has gained a stone in weight.
So off we went in the mended car. The visit up to the end of lunch was fine but when my mother instructed me to unpack I explained that she looked fine to me and I would not be staying she went bananas. How could I be so cruel when she was dying, when her mother had been dying she had gone straight away on a bus! I was evil she would die in the night and it would be on my conscience…..and so on. I explained that no one who had put on a stone recently was very likely to fade away to which she shouted that I was evil, evil. We adjourned to the living room where she decided not to speak to me and turned her face away mostly. Just turning back to spit out that I was a liar that I had said I would come, I was leaving her with strangers, she had looked after me when I was little, why wasn’t I returning the favour? She wouldn’t speak to me, we weren’t related. How would I like it if she died in the night? I was an evil selfish minx, she would die and I would be sorry it would be on my conscience for ever after.
In the end when I went upstairs to see whether there was progress with the other half trying to make the bedroom radiator work by bleeding it, the carer took me to one side and said could I believe it? I wasn’t sure if she thought I should stay but she laughed and said no, could I believe my mother was acting like a five year old? As this is pretty much the way my mother has acted all her life I wasn’t expecting anything else. My father used to say in a tired way that I should just do what Mummy wanted, so I did, right up to the point where I wanted to commit suicide.
So an hour early we made tea and took the cake in, which of course my mother refused to eat. I poured her a cup of tea which she shouted I should take away and she carried on by turns doing the silent treatment, emotional blackmail, and just straightforward plain dementia. When I was sure the carer could cope we left. Fortunately the previous visit I had made sure my mother had a spare week’s money in her purse to pay the cleaner, her hairdresser and for the paper so I didn’t have to mention it. I’m quite sure she would have thrown it at me or ripped it up.
It’s quite ironic that she finishes assorted castigations by asserting: There’s nothing wrong with my brain you know, or that she shouts: You will be well paid for this! when there won’t be anything left. As the other half pointed out she is also prone to saying terrible things and then accusing me of them, she will tell a whopper and then immediately accuse me of being a liar.
At home I was exhausted. I slept in late this morning and was just beginning to recover by this evening when the phone went. You’ve guessed it. Repeat performance. She was dying I had to come immediately, where was I? What sort of evil person would leave their weak old mother dying and abandoned by strangers? I said little, I was already talked out, and eventually managed to end the call without hanging up on her.
This afternoon I circumvented an attempt by the other half to clear his overdraft and bar bill by ringing one of those law firms that advertise on television saying they will recover money for you from your bank if you have been mis-sold payment protection insurance on credit cards. He made arrangements for someone to visit tomorrow, giving out all our personal details on the phone. We had a blazing row, he took a lot of convincing that as we have one small credit card hardly ever used and always paid off we don’t have PPIs because we weren’t ever sold any. Given his negative fiscal ability it has taken me a long time to build a good relationship with a bank. Our current one is lovely and I really do not want anyone to sue them in my name. I think some sort of television ombudsman needs to stop these misleading adverts. Telling people there is a pot of money set aside by banks to reimburse customers is asking for trouble. I think it’s as bad as pay day loan companies who do not need to exist at all, the planet would be a great deal happier without them. Eventually he cancelled the call and showed me on his phone that he had.
Tomorrow I’ll be back to my mother on the phone going nuts. The other half suggests that I should ask at the outset why she isn’t dead as promised. Of course I haven’t and will not. I don’t need to look at pictures on the Internet of damaged brains anymore to convince myself that my mother has one and to speak gently to her, it is now apparent for all to see.
It is so sad that people will take the most wonderful thing in the universe and systematically destroy it with alcohol, inactivity and in the case of my mother half a pound of butter a week. It is so sad and so exhausting for everyone.
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JaneLaverick.com – terribly tired.