Shewolfinthevalley

On 20 July 2021 I wrote

Well that’s been quite the day!

I went for a much needed swim late this afternoon, the tide was out, far out but that was fine. The sea was almost as warm as the Scottish sun and I floated on my back and splashed my feet in the salty water. Nearby a heron stood watching everything… occasionally poking its head into the water and coming up with a snack.

Then I sat on my usual rock and stitched. And breathed in that fresh salt air.

First thing this morning I sewed more name labels on to Mum’s clothes. I’d emptied out her chest of drawers, and chosen her capsule wardrobe. The chest of drawers and a holdall of clothes was ready to go. We removed favourite pictures from the walls of her home.

And then I took a Covid test. I’m Covid-free. Phew.

Because today of all days I could not have Covid.

Today is Mum’s Escape Day.

She arrived, by ambulance, just after I got to the care home to get her room ready. Her chairs and the bed have familiar throws over them; her old chest of drawers is in the corner; there are vases of flowers from her garden.

She thinks she will be fine there. I think so too.

I needed that swim.

20 January 2023 and as I re-read those words I wrote exactly 18 months ago, tears pricked at my eyes, and I could feel a first sob try to escape from my throat. I’ve put the sob back, but the tears are gently falling.

No more to add today, except to say that yes, she has been fine there, and she continues to be so. And, as I was told on that first day, I have been able to go back to being ‘just a daughter, not a daughter and a carer’ again.

***

Finally, 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, an embroidery project I started after I realised Mum might have dementia. There I was, embroidering her old fisherman’s smock with symbols relating to her life; meanwhile her memories were being thrown around like so many pieces of jigsaw in a big box.

Not in the mood for this? That’s ok. But if you feel like a bit of cooking or baking, perhaps making use of the short Seville oranges season to make some delicious marmalade then you could check out my recipes here. This blog started out as recipes, sometimes accompanied by wee stories, so I’ve got a back catalogue of tasty things to make. Do let me know if you’d like me to add more recipes in the future – I had an ambition to make a carers cookbook a couple of years ago… perhaps some day.

Tags: dementia, Taking Smock Of The Situation

On 19 July 2021 I wrote

I’ll come back to the flower and pick out some details, but for now I’m done with pink, so it’s back to the stem and frondy leaves.

The pendant was Mum’s (of course) and I remember as a child thinking how glamorous she seemed when she put it on. Mum has never been someone who cares much about fashion and she never wore make up, except perhaps a smudge of matt pink lipstick sometimes, so glamorous wasn’t a word I often associated with her.

Mum has given me lots of her jewellery over the years, and gave me this pendant when I came to mind her back at the beginning of this year.

Then a couple of months ago I found her one day distressed and trying to remove her wedding rings (dad gave her a second gold band for their golden wedding). She couldn’t explain why but she no longer wanted to wear them, she wanted me to look after them. I did, but made a deal with her that all she needed do was click her fingers if she wanted them back.

A couple of weeks later she clicked her fingers and she wore them again. Until she broke her wrist and the quick thinking nurse removed her rings before her hands and fingers blew up like balloons overnight.

I’ve been wearing her wedding band now for the last 5 weeks, but Mum still knows she can click her fingers if she wants it back. It’s hers.

And now, 18 months after first writing those words about Mum’s wedding rings, I wear her ring all the time. Initially it felt odd to wear a gold band, on my wedding ring finger. I have never been married, so in my late 50s I had never worn such a significant gold band. I was constantly aware of it. Shortly after I started wearing it I also took to wearing a ring Mum had given me several Christmasses ago (it was simply attached to a ribbon and hung on the tree, for me to find). It had been Granbunny’s ring, and it fitted the same finger and, being a ring with a large cut topaz surrounded by seed pearls, it hid the simple gold band. I felt like the gold wedding band was my secret. It was also symbolic of the strong bond I had with Mum. And of our separation. It was a constant reminder to me (though none was needed) that she was now so very different to the Mum I’d known all my life. And also a reminder that some day, she would no longer be with us.

I also regularly wear a modern amethyst and silver ring which Mum used to wear often – I’ll never know for sure now, but I think perhaps Dad bought it for her on a trip they made to Orkney in the 90s. Again, Mum had given this to me a few years ago. The other ring I now put on every day is a simple limpet shell, picked from Carrick Shore – it feels soothing to carry this bit of the shore with me all the time; despite the slight discomfort when I first started wearing it!

I haven’t taken Mum’s wedding ring off for more than a few minutes at a time since that day she went into hospital. And each of those few minutes have been at her behest. Initially she thought she might wear it again, and she would tentatively try it on; she would also try on Granbunny’s ring… but always, always she would give both rings back to me, saying I should keep them safe.

Latterly, she talked of another woman who ‘lives here and sometimes comes to see me’ who had a ring like Granbunny’s ‘but not as special’… and Mum was somehow worried that this woman might get confused and believe that Granbunny’s ring was actually hers, or that both rings might get stolen or lost. I continued to assure Mum that I kept all her things safe. But, as ever, if she wanted anything back all she had to do was click her fingers.

In the months after Mum went to live in Fleet Valley we would occasionally take her out bundled up in a wheelchair, for a short walk in the fresh air, and then for ‘soup and a sandwich’ for lunch; or if it was still too early for lunch, then for a hot chocolate. Mum loved a hot chocolate. The first time we went out, she seemed so diminished, and almost frightened of her surroundings, and she probably was. By this time she had been institutionalised for some months, her dementia meant that she found it difficult to process anything new or unfamiliar and this was far out of her recent experience of life. Her hot chocolate arrived in an enormous cup and saucer and Mum just stared at it. We all wondered if she would be able to lift it to her mouth, and at what point we help her. Mum picked up the teaspoon, and delicately started to spoon off the froth on top of the hot chocolate, licking her lips with delight at the sweet taste. In that moment I realised that whenever I buy a hot drink with any froth on top, the first thing I do is spoon off the froth and eat it… I hadn’t known until this moment that I was just copying Mum.

There was one day, when we were having this conversation, and Mum realised that she could no longer click her fingers – this mattered not, she knew that I would honour my promise and that I was just looking after things on her behalf.

And truly, this is how I’ve felt about so much this last year. As though I am just holding on to Mum’s most loved things on her behalf. And in that list of most loved things, I include myself and my siblings.

***

Finally, 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, an embroidery project I started after I realised Mum might have dementia. There I was, embroidering her old fisherman’s smock with symbols relating to her life; meanwhile her memories were being thrown around like so many pieces of jigsaw in a big box.

Not in the mood for this? That’s ok. But if you feel like a bit of cooking or baking, perhaps making use of the short Seville oranges season to make some delicious marmalade then you could check out my recipes here. This blog started out as recipes, sometimes accompanied by wee stories, so I’ve got a back catalogue of tasty things to make. Do let me know if you’d like me to add more recipes in the future – I had an ambition to make a carers cookbook a couple of years ago… perhaps some day.

Tags: dementia, Taking Smock Of The Situation

On 18 July 2021 I wrote

I drive past the Galloway Smokehouse at Carsluith every time I go to visit Mum in hospital.

I lie.

Some days I don’t drive past, but stop in and see what snacks they might have for supper.

My brother and I knew from the outset that caring for Mum would be, as they say, an emotional rollercoaster. And it’s fair to say that it was. I hardly need to say that I’d known Mum all my life, so witnessing her slow decline each day, towards an inevitable death was almost impossible to bear.

But it was not by any stretch of the imagination unrelenting sadness and doom. Though most days one of us would cry, we looked after one another. Being in Galloway was a huge comfort in itself – the views would make my heart sing, the trees in the local woods bathed me with their dappled sunlight, but the shore was always the balm of choice for my soul. And even on days when I didn’t manage to get down to the sea, just knowing it was there, waiting, always there, was a comfort to me.

Our family has always found comfort in food, in eating well, in caring for one another through making something that nourishes their soul as well as their body. So, of course we were going to buy a lobster from the Galloway Smokehouse! And it was delicious, and only £12, if I remember right.

On the last day I drove the 84 miles round trip from Gatehouse to the hospital in Stranraer and back again, I also stopped off at the Antique Shop I’d driven past so many times. You can see its big sign on the side of a farm building from the main road, but essentially it is deep in the middle of nowhere.

It was one of the hottest days of the year (I know this for a fact, because one of my other projects that year was making a temperature blanket, so I recorded the highest and lowest temperature of each day for the whole year), and there was not a breath of wind. I’m not used to hot weather and don’t actually like it very much, so it was sweet relief to head into the cool byres and rummage about in the piles of musty furniture and random stuff. It was fairly inevitable that I’d come away having bought something, but who would have predicted the vintage jelly mould? Eighteen months on, I’m still to get into the jelly-making habit (not helped by the jelly mould being stored in Mum’s larder, while I live 100 miles away). But there’s time, there’s always time. Until there isn’t, of course.

As I write this I’m about to set off to see Mum. It’s a 200 mile round trip these days, but I do it so willingly and with joy in my heart at knowing I’ll see her when I get there. When I arrive in her room, with my arms open wide with joy, I greet her with “Hello Mum… it’s me…. Loïs”. I started doing this instinctively at a point when she found it increasingly difficult to find the words she wanted, and that could include a person’s name. And, although this is a kind thing to do for someone with dementia, I realise it is a kindness to do it in all sorts of situations (though post pandemic I don’t find myself in those network type situations any more, so perhaps I will never put this into practice).

I know that I won’t always look forward to seeing Mum, there will be times when it is more than I can bear to see her so changed from that vibrant, confident Mum we all knew – and over the last 18 months there have been times when I have almost dreaded visits. But I seem to have found a zen spot that works for me at the moment. If she is alert we can have a limited conversation, and there are usually smiles somewhere along the line. And if she isn’t, if all she can manage is to vaguely flicker her eyelids open and then go back to snoozing, then I can sit quietly knitting or embroidering for a while. I occasionally read a section of her memoir to her, or just talk to her about things she’s told me about her childhood. We often will make sure she has a lucky stone to hold, and I tell her how lucky that stone is to be held in her hand, how lucky I have been in my life to have been held by her, my favourite mother.

***

Finally, 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, an embroidery project I started after I realised Mum might have dementia. There I was, embroidering her old fisherman’s smock with symbols relating to her life; meanwhile her memories were being thrown around like so many pieces of jigsaw in a big box.

Not in the mood for this? That’s ok. But if you feel like a bit of cooking or baking, perhaps making Energy Bars, then you could check out my recipes here. This blog started out as recipes, sometimes accompanied by wee stories, so I’ve got a back catalogue of tasty things to make. Do let me know if you’d like me to add more recipes in the future – I had an ambition to make a carers cookbook a couple of years ago… perhaps some day.

Tags: dementia, Taking Smock Of The Situation

On 18 July 2021 I wrote

I sat in the shade yesterday and completed the main stitching on the cosmos flower. Sitting in mum’s garden was beautifully calming, despite my double espresso. The only sounds were of birdsong, including the less than tuneful quackery and splish sploshing of these ducks.

In other news, the swallows took a couple of weeks off after their first brood fledged and now they are back under the eaves, with a second nest of eggs.

Mum wasn’t happy in hospital. She was aware of enough to know that this was not a good place for her to be, but she was unable to speak up for herself. Our time in the hospital was absolutely focused on her and on being with her, on giving her an hour or two each day when she was reminded of who she was, and that we would do everything we could to keep her safe. We didn’t want to lie to Mum, and we knew not to make promises we could not keep, so we never talked to her about getting her home, but talked often of her Escape Plan, of getting her out of hospital, of making sure she was looked after and happy.

One day she looked up at James, and said to him “I’m not going to go home am I?”. There we were, dancing around this truth, and she just came out with it. Even in her dementia, in her confusion, she made life easier for us. This was said at the point when we were just beginning to research care homes. It was perhaps the kindest thing she could have done, though I doubt that she knew it; she took away any sense that we were letting her down, that we were betraying her wishes. We already knew we could not cope with looking after her at home any more, no matter how often a day a carer popped in to help… but it was such a relief to know that at some level Mum recognised this too.

Mum absolutely accepted that we were making good decisions for her, and was so grateful to us. We didn’t want to give her details about the Escape Plan until we had it properly in place. Bits of information could circle round and round in her head, making her more anxious if they didn’t quite fully make sense to her. So, until we had everything confirmed we just referred to the Escape Plan.. and she seemed to quite like this concept.

In other news, around this time I was finally informed that I had not been successful in the internal job interview I’d attended a couple of weeks before. I had worked out for myself that I hadn’t been successful, but had become increasingly hurt that no-one told me (despite assuring me I would be informed within 48 hours of the interview). The reason I was given for not being offered the job was that I didn’t have another language. My new colleague is ace, but we are both perplexed by this reason for me not getting the job – they don’t have a second language either.

In other times this might have been a spur for me to really apply myself to finding another job. But, it had the opposite effect – I realised that I didn’t have the emotional energy to put myself through a recruitment process. I knew I could not present my best self to a potential employer, and also that further rejection would utterly break me.

Life continued. But I had absolute clarity about where my priorities lay from now on. And work was nowhere near the top any more. This was a new way of living for me – it didn’t yet sit very comfortably, but I have always been a relatively quick learner!

***

Finally, 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, an embroidery project I started after I realised Mum might have dementia. There I was, embroidering her old fisherman’s smock with symbols relating to her life; meanwhile her memories were being thrown around like so many pieces of jigsaw in a big box.

Not in the mood for this? That’s ok. But if you feel like a bit of cooking or baking, perhaps making this super simple Throw It In The Oven Chicken Dinner (I know, I should have just called it Winner Winner Chicken Dinner), then you could check out my recipes here.

Tags: dementia, Taking Smock Of The Situation