On 27 June 2021 I wrote:
My big pink cosmos flower is beginning to look a wee bit more like it might be recognisable as a flower. Squeee!
In the background is another bunch of flowers from the garden. Mum loves her garden and makes creating a wonderful space, full of interest and colour all year round, seem so easy. She just has a great instinct, matched with some serious knowledge.
Today I give you two bonus pics, both hand drawn.
The first one is a pencil sketch in the back of her school poetry book, so probably drawn by her as a teenager.
The second is by her youngest grandchild. Thank you Camila, what a kind and talented child you are!
I was struggling at work during this period. I was probably struggling fullstop.
But I was lucky with work, they had brought in good flexible working policies for people with caring responsibilities in January 2021, so I could use 20% of my working hours as caring time – this had helped in the first few months of the year, when Mum was still living at home, semi-independently. But now that so much of our time was taken up travelling to and from hospital, this wasn’t sufficient. I decided to take two days off a week, so on those days I could devote myself to Mum, and also not worry about how wrung out I was on my return from the hospital. Because invariably I was wrung out.
I was constantly anxious about the future. It felt certain that Mum’s condition would deteriorate (at a rate unknown) and then inevitably would die. It also felt certain that Mum would never ‘be herself’ again, that none of us could look forward to a better time with her, a more enjoyable day, or even just an easily relaxed day when we were happily companionable in one another’s company. Every time I thought about how her life had changed, how our relationship had changed I would well up with tears. And if ever I allowed my brain to fast forward to a time when Mum would not know who I am, the tears flowed freely down my cheeks. So, I learned to live in the moment with Mum, to accept her each day for who she was that day, never comparing her to a previous version of herself, nor to an imagined future Mum. It was surprisingly easy once I got my head round it, and free-ed me up to really be with her each time we were together. And, you know what? Every single time I have seen her, there has been so much still to love about her. And today, over a year later, she has little in the way of actual conversation these days, but we laughed together this morning, between her peaceful snoozes.
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If you want to catch up on how we got to this point, this series of posts starts here, with Taking Smock of the Situation.
Shewolfinthevalley 
Absolutely great advice.
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