Tag Archives: mother

home sweet home

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Mum was transferred to the care facility today. She has a lovely room with an ensuite and an enclosed patio. My sister said that she has a copy of the social calendar and tomorrow alone they have a trip to a local restaurant for morning tea, a fashion show, a musical performance, they can play bowls, or take a relaxation class and in the evening someone is coming in to lead a games evening!

All meals are cooked onsite, unlike a lot of homes where it is processed food. And already the diversional therapist, the doctor and the social director have been in to see her. Tomorrow a physiotherapist will access her as well.

Our cousin who works in the facility made a point of asking the staff to take extra care of her aunty, and they laughingly replied that what else do they do there?

Mum appeared quite settled by the time my sister left, which is a relief for everyone. She is a very social person, unlike her daughter Flamingo Dancer (I take up my Dad who was a solitary person).

We have been so fortunate in how this has all turned out. Mum is in a lovely facility with very caring people, where she will actually know a lot of the other residents, and the staff.

Now we just have to sort through a life time of belongings and clutter (Mum has lived in her home for 56 years!) and prepare her house for sale, to finance her care. There goes the inheritance!

Phase one complete.

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and so it goes

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Sister, Brother and I just had a round robin telephone conference and have agreed to place Mum in a home. The community nurse contacted us with an offer of a high care bed in a facility about 20 minutes drive from Our Hometown, and actually in the town where most of my mother’s sisters live.

It isn’t the home that would be our first choice, but when old people refuse to make timely decisions they also lose the right to choice. Mum always said that she would “know when it is time to move”, but of course, as we knew, no one ever does recognise the moment.

She is fairly clear for the first part of the day, but as the day goes on she starts to sundown and is quite unsettled at night. We have been open with her that she needs to go into care, and at times she seems to understand, but at other times she asks my sister to take her home. She has even had a weep, and this is a woman whom I have only ever witnessed crying at her father’s funeral, and to be a little teary when my Dad died, so I understand the depth of her grief at losing her freedom and her mind.

We are all a little apprehensive, as we lived through our Dad suffering from dementia, though his was caused by multi-infarct dementia and he became quite aggressive at times. Mum’s is taking a different course, though we know the end will be the same. It is making us all fearful for what be ahead for us as we age too.

Life really is a shit, and then you die, but more importantly take control of your destiny in a timely manner. Be prepared. Don’t break your family’s heart making decisions that you should have made.

 

the trials of my tribulations

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The intercom system at school requested me to phone the front desk this morning. When I did so I was told that Mr FD wanted me to phone him. My sister had found our Mum, who has just turned 85, collapsed on the floor of her living room. We are not sure how long she had been lying there, but it could have been any time since Sunday morning. My sister called an ambulance and Mum was admitted to hospital.

The diagnosis is that Mum has a severe urinary tract infection, so severe that it has poisoned her system and caused her to suffer a heart attack. It has set her heart beat out of rhythm and she is on medication to bring that under control, and also a drip and antibiotics.

The doctor has said that he does not want Mum to return home. She needs to go into care.  Of course she has until now refused to be accessed for care even to go on a long waiting list, so you can appreciate the joy we are expecting when we explain to her that she won’t be going home.

This is the woman, who when my sister found her lying on the floor this morning and asked, “Have you had a fall, Mum?”, angrily replied “No, I am just lying on the floor, I always lie on the floor. It is my floor and I will lie on it if I want too!”

This is the woman, who replied to me when I said “You’ve had a fall Mum’ – “I am not so sure about that!” as though I was making the whole thing up.

I know that in a couple of days when she is feeling a little better that she will declare that she is only ill because we made her go to hospital for  she has often declared that if you go to the doctor you get sick!

In a way, she deserves some of what is happening to her, because she apparently got a call back from the doctor following her recent blood tests but didn’t tell my sister, her primary carer. She told her own sister, but swore her sister; another stubborn, ignorant woman, not to tell my sister. Aunt only telephoned my sister on Saturday; too late.

What is it with their generation and their secrets and desperate need not to be open and honest with their families? I love my Mum and I know my Mum loves me, but I swear she will tell me a lie, or a half truth faster than the truth. She is even worse to my sister in that she lashes her with anger as well.  The only result is that they bring suffering on themselves and make life so much harder than it needs to be for all those around them.

Oh Lord, and to think this is just the start of the journey with my Mum.

I swear I am going to start looking for a bargain on a yurt and I am going to take to the wilds and stay there; at least until I can return and be a burden to my children!

This might be funny…

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…if it wasn’t my mother!

The government has provided all senior citizens with a new set top box for their televisions to assist with the change to digital television.

My mother has experienced some confusion in adjusting to the new process for switching her television on and off. So, my niece wrote a note telling Grandma how to turn her television on and off. The instructions finished with “press the red button” and an image of a red button. A red sticker was placed on the appropriate button.

My sister received a phone call from Grandma, she couldn’t figure out how to work the television. She kept saying that she was pushing the red button and nothing was happening.

Eventually my sister asked “which red button are you pressing Mum?”

Yes, she was pressing the red button on the note taped to the wall!

It was one of her more confused days, I have to admit. but… Like I said, it would be humorous, if it just wasn’t my mother!

that old Christmas spirit

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Every year my 83 year old mother declares that she has no “Christmas spirit” and “just can’t get into Christmas this year”. As we were growing up she always made a nice lunch for us, and we each got A present, and one from Santa when we were small, but Christmas was no big deal to Mum. We children generally decorated the very small tree that we had with the ornaments from the shoebox that they were stored in from year to year.

 So this year, I decided that Mum was going to get some Christmas spirit. After a little pep talk that you only get out of life, what you put into it, and in its turn, Christmas, Mum agreed to cooperate. My sister and brother-in-law drove her to our house and together we wrote Christmas cards to all her friends and family. Mum’s job was to think of people she wanted to send the card to, and to choose which particular card that she wanted to send to each person. My sister and I then wrote the cards and addressed the envelope for her.

 At the start there was a very loud dictate that her brothers and sisters did not want Christmas cards. She has 7 brothers and sisters, as one recently died. “They will get angry if I send them; they said they didn’t want them”. My sister and I interpreted this as being “we are too lazy to write cards and if you send me one, I will have to send you one”. They are a very close family, but in no way affectionate towards each other.  I did get her to agree to send one to her youngest sister whom Mum has not seen in several years, so that was something.

 Sister and I joked that we should write the siblings long letters pretending to be Mum, saying how much she loved them, and how much they all meant to her, just to give them all a head spin. We could visualise them all going into a frantic phone circle deciding how to deal with their rampant sibling! Oh no, a blatant show of affection, what will we do! Panic stations!

 In the end we came up with about 15 recipients. It has to be admitted that most of her friends have now passed on, so that did shorten the list, sadly. Mum was quite docile and well behaved. She behaves for me, but she is very hard on my sister. They are too much alike to not disagree, but my sister is also the one who shoulders the daily support of Mum, and so Mum should be more appreciative. Anyway, today Mum was a very obedient girl and we did have fun chatting about the various friends and relatives as we added them to the list.

Sister’s daughter and two year old grand-daughter (both my god-daughters too) also came to visit. Once one flamingo dancer knows that there is a gathering of family, more are sure to follow!  So I also got to play tea parties, and read books, and laugh at jokes that I couldn’t even understand, but it was so much fun. She made me lunch out of a small wooden owl chess piece, her tippy water cup, a bowl from the coffee table, and a coaster. It was delicious, and I should know because she made it three times for me and watched as I ate every bite each time. I may have chewed rather nosily for effect, but the chef appreciated the drama!

 Daughter1, who has been coming here most days this week as her house is a renovation scene due to painters working inside and outside of their home. While we were writing cards she made a wonderful pumpkin, fetta and bean salad, which was so good, that her cousin asked for recipe instantly!  We ate it with cold chicken, a tomato and cucumber salad with aioli dressing, and a loaf of French bread (no, I did not bake it!). Long glass of old fashioned lemonade completed a lovely family lunch.

 

For dessert we ate the cranberry brownies that I had baked yesterday in anticipation of our Yule event. Followed by large cups of tea of course!

 

Niece had to leave in time to collect her older children from school, and sister, mother and BIL left about an hour later. Daughter1 stayed a little longer to help me tidy. I rewarded her with two huge mangoes from the tray that I bought at the weekend, so she left well pleased!  Sister was taking Mum home to put up Mum’s little tree so she is getting the full Christmas treatment this year. Whether she likes it or not!

 I do hope that I don’t become twisted and bitter when I am old. May I always enjoy my life, and never stop telling the people I love that I care about them, and showing them in anyway I can. Old age doesn’t have to mean self-centred and grumpy. Bitter and twisted does not look good on anyone.

 Life, Be in it!