A Week in Foggy January...

Oh boy doesn’t January just go on and on. My rational brain tells me it’s no longer than several other months of the year yet this year in particular, the cold and the dark feel endless. Five more days and I’m counting. Don’t even get me started on the news. And not only that, but I have also spent far too many hours this week staring at a blank page, starting to type, deleting everything and starting again only to deem what I have written as self-indulgent gibberish. My brain refuses to cooperate, but it turns out there is a reason for the brain fog.

This time last week I had signed the contract for the sale of my Mum’s flat and was ready to hit the road running. I knew I would be under pressure because unlike packing to move to a new house, everything has to be redistributed or disposed of, not just wrapped and packed. Decisions need to be made and of course without a fixed deadline I kept putting off those decisions. In many ways Mum has already done a lot of the difficult work because she moved from the three bedroomed house where she had lived with my Dad for over forty years and where I grew up, not long after my Dad died. But her flat is still packed full of stuff and as I sort through every box and drawer, signs of what I now know to be her dementia are everywhere.

Things are randomly put in envelopes or wrapped inside boxes or purses and hidden in bags and tucked into drawers. And everything I take out to read or discover feels like I am intruding on her life. How can we make decisions about what is important in someone else’s life? What do we keep and what do we discard? For Mum’s 90^th birthday back in September, I compiled a scrapbook and filled it with mementos and photographs from throughout her life. Things like certificates, letters and photographs of special people, places and events. It felt like a good way to keep safe those precious memories and also a means for her to remember too. But now there are other things like her swimming medals, her prayer book dated 1948, a book given as a school prize to my Dad when he was fourteen, as well as items that had belonged to my grandparents. All these I will keep, because what else can I do with them but it’s in the knowledge that as they pass down each generation they will probably mean less and less, and that makes me feel sad.

And because it has all happened so quickly there is still masses to get done and very little time to do it. So it was sod’s law that by last Sunday evening the slightly dry throat that I woke up to had turned into a cough and raging heading ache. My plan for Monday was to spend an entire day packing stuff up combined with trips to the dump and the charity shop depot. Instead I cancelled pretty much all of the week’s other commitments from under a blanket on the sofa and hoped that a day of complete rest might do me good. I got that wrong.

Having sat up half the night I could now add exhaustion to the mix, but I couldn’t face putting the flat off for another day. So I topped up with paracetamol, honey and lemon, and we both went over to the flat for what I intended to be just an hour. Mostly I supervised while Stewart loaded the cars, filling his with stuff for the dump and mine with bags for the charity shop. He then did a couple of trips to the dump before having to head off to a hospital appointment and I made my way to the charity drop off. On arrival I was met with a sign that said they couldn’t take any books at the moment which given half the car was filled with books wasn’t what I wanted to hear. But I unloaded the clothes and other odds and ends, got back in the car, turned the key and… nothing. It was completely dead!

Fortunately the RAC came to my rescue reasonably quickly and the patrol man was very kind and sympathetic as he declared my battery well and truly dead. New battery fitted, I was home by mid-afternoon, several hours later than planned and feeling very cold.

By late Wednesday evening after another night of not sleeping I resorted to drugs to knock me out, but just as I was filling my hot water bottle the phone rang. The night carer at the home was calling to let me know that Mum had had a fall getting in or out of bed. At the time of calling they couldn’t get her off the floor, but they seemed to have it under control assuring me they didn’t need me to come in and a paramedic was on the way, which was just as well as I wasn’t capable of driving anyway, so I went off to bed thinking it would be another night of sleepless worry until I could check on her in the morning… but no, the wonder that is Night Nurse knocked me right out. Oblivion!

Oblivion for me and Mum too as it turns out. She didn’t recall falling or spending time on the floor and had no idea how she just happened to have a bump, bruises and cuts on her leg. There are obviously benefits to having dementia when you can’t remember anything from one day to the next. Got to look on the bright side!

Since Mum had the heart attack last summer resulting in a two week hospital stay and then an unplanned move into the care home I have occasionally written about the fall out of what happened. The process of gradually tidying up her flat ready to get it in a condition worthy of estate agent photographs and now the ongoing job of clearing and disposing of the contents, as well as witnessing Mum’s rapid decline into dementia. Writing about it hopefully with a lightness of touch and some humour has helped me deal with the situation. It’s cheaper than therapy. But the truth is I’m not sure I am always dealing with it, and although we can still laugh it makes me feel very sad.

But life goes on and so did this endless week in January, until on Friday I realised I had absolutely no sense of smell. After a rummage through the shelf that laughingly serves as our medicine cabinet I found a lonely left over test kit and out of curiosity did a test. Lo and behold it turns out I have Covid, so there is an excuse for the brain fog and the total lack of ability to string a coherent thought together. (You would not believe how many times I have reread and edited this, mostly rearranging words that are in the wrong order!) This meant another whole string of appointments have been cancelled over the weekend into next week, including a life drawing workshop I had booked for Saturday that I was very much looking forward to. Ah well, c’est la vie. And because it really is the week that keeps on giving, my poor Mum had a long day at the hospital yesterday to check she hadn’t broken anything. Fortunately my brother was able to go with her, but it was still a complete fiasco of miscommunication from start to finish. She is thankfully now back home with antibiotics and pain relief

The photos I’m sharing this week are some of my Mum’s paintings from the many years of art classes she attended… something nice to look at if you don’t want to read the words!

Mum and me on her 90th birthday

Let’s hope this coming week is a better one for everyone and maybe I’ll be to be back to some semblance of normality by next Sunday.