Marianne Talbot with her mother It was mum's 89th birthday on Saturday. When I visited, there was a party in progress. There were 'Happy Birthday' banners on the wall and the door, and mum was in her favourite chiffon outfit. Very Queen mum! Though I doubt Her Majesty ever had fingernails of that particular violent pink. There were two cakes: a chocolate gluten-free one just for mum, another for everyone else. Mum was singing away, surrounded by a respectable number of birthday cards, all featuring cats.
I stayed half an hour. Ideal. The whole thing is ideal and I am feeling incredibly happy! The home is a ten-minute cycle ride away, so it is easy to take half an hour out and spend ten minutes with mum. It is also on my route to and from town so I can drop in after my swim, or before a meeting.
Mum doesn't seem to mind that I only stay ten minutes. It is a really enjoyable ten minutes. I fetch her glasses and we 'read' together. Then I say 'I'm off! See you tomorrow' and she puts up her face for a kiss.
All this is enabling me to re-engage with my love for her. During the last dreadful six to nine months it has been so difficult to access this love. How can you love someone who is querulous, demanding and difficult? Try as I did I found myself disliking her more and more. But now loving her is as easy as it ever was.
Looking back, mum should have gone into a home about 6 months ago. Re-reading my blog I see there was a point at which I was thinking she was no longer getting any benefit from being looked after by me, that what she really needed were professionals. But I was arrogant enough to believe that no-one could look after her as well as I could, frightened by our dreadful experience of respite, and frankly I was just too exhausted to be able to see straight.
As the situation became more and more intolerable I patched and patched it, adding this and dropping that until I hardly even knew what I was doing.
But of course it wasn't just my failings that led to the delay. The whole system is set up in such a way that people in mum's position rarely get what they need until they, and of course, the person caring for them, is literally unable to cope.
In order for the system to grind into action I had to get myself into such a state I was prescribed valium. Mum was put through six months of agony and so was I.
There must, surely, be a better way?