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Secret diary of a carer
As Saga’s Respite for Carers Trust is launched, our website ‘blogger’ Marianne Talbot – who looks after her mother – shares the reality of being a carer. Photographs by Paul Stuart
“I certainly wouldn’t want to live with any of you!” Mum said when the subject of ageing came up. Dad wanted to fall out of the apple tree and be put on the compost heap.
Caring for my parents has taught me a great deal. For a start I’ve learnt a huge amount about myself. I am extremely patient, for example. Who would have thought it? Not me. Also I am able, on the whole, to maintain a sense of humour even when things are getting quite scary. That’s a nice thing to learn about oneself. In fact there are loads of nice things I have learnt about myself. I am reliable, organised, trustworthy, kind and generally a good egg!
It’s not that I don’t have a darker side. Caring for Mum has taught me a good deal about this too. I am quite capable of eating all of her chocolate biscuits, despite their being gluten-free and hugely expensive, because she won’t remember I bought them. I send my siblings on the occasional guilt trip in order to underline the fact I do most of the work. I have even been known to use the fact I care for Mum as a sort of moral trump card: it has got me out of all sorts of unpleasant things.
I have also learnt a lot about what is and isn’t important. It is not important that Mum’s bedroom gets vacuumed every day. But it is important that I find some time every day to sit and talk to her. Professional carers know all this.
Since I have been a carer it has become clear to me how many professional carers there are, and what a brilliant job they do under incredibly difficult circumstances. The people at Mum’s day care centre, The Willows, are paragons. They look after Mum in both body and spirit. It is lovely to see her come home animated and smiling, utterly relaxed with the driver and escort, obviously having had a wonderful day.
One of the best things I have learnt, in fact, is that most people are nice most of the time. Bus drivers, seeing us struggling to get to the stop, slow down. Check-in people watch Mum so I can whizz round without her. The day care people deliver Mum 15 minutes late so I can go swimming… from Mum’s postman in her Cheshire village to our neighbours, the milk of human kindness is evident.
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