30th October 2011 Sunday
When I get there my sister has already stripped my father’s bed, put the sheets in the machine and made his breakfast. It seems he has taken two antibiotics this morning instead of one. While I help him try on his new striped pyjamas - too long in the sleeve - she makes a phone call about respite care. This feels like another stage in our lives now - the tectonic plates are shifting, throwing up a new pattern of how to look after our father.
This feeling stays with me all day - an undercurrent of uncertainty, a shadow in my heart. It meshes with the fallout of a phone conversation I had this afternoon with a woman whose husband is in the final stages of frontotemporal dementia. He can’t feed himself now and needs twenty four hour care. She says I should get a volunteer to help me fill out the claim forms I have had for months. The ones I don’t want to open. Because this isn’t happening to us. My husband isn’t like hers.
Later the shadow fades as we walk with dear companions through woods dripping with the russets and burning golds of autumn, soft carpets of pine needles under our feet. A sumptuous home made tea of delicate cucumber sandwiches, mince pies and dark date and walnut cake takes my mind off it all. Reminds me that now is all I have.
My husband wins our game of scrabble tonight. Those tectonic plates at least are the same as they were yesterday.
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