The Beginning

 This is a beginning even though I have been writing this blog since 2006.  I have decided to change the blog’s name as the one I gave it no longer applies and because I want to get back to writing on a regular basis and may find a different direction.  Simple as that!  Why Kit and Caboodle?  I saw it used as the name of a clothing company in the RHS magazine The Garden and thought that it fit perfectly what I wanted to write about…the whole kit and caboodle!  

And so to start, which often seems to be difficult for me to do unless I have an impetus or a good kick in the pants.  I seem to be poised on the brink of change and rather than letting myself go with the flow and not have a destination in mind, I want to think through what I am going to do when the next year is over and I move from working at the school I have been at for the last 23 year.  I will also be going from living with Naomi and her family to them moving into their own home and me living on my own for the first time since before I got married.  I don’t know which I find more challenging (or is that terrifying)…living alone or not having a large salary to count on each month!

  

What to call this post?

This has been the most difficult 6 months of my life.  I am sure that in the year of Covid, many people will be saying that.  Before February, I think that I would have said that 2014 had been the most difficult, the year my husband lay dying in St. Peter's hospital.  I'm still not sure how I managed to cope with that.  However, this year is a different 'difficult' because it has been challenging on so many fronts.  

First there was and still is the pandemic, which led to the lock down in the UK in late March, and which still lingers and threatens to be reimposed as cases start to climb again.  If it had just been that, it would have been challenging enough.  However, I also had my mother, who suffers from vascular dementia, to look after at her flat in Thetford, a small town in Norfolk, where I only knew two other people besides my mother.  

Two Hard Days

The last two days have been very difficult.  My mother had a prolonged period of forgetting that I was her daughter, that the flat we were living in was her home and that she was Beryl Heather Merrick.  At one point she left the flat and wandering around Thetford with me following at a discrete distance.  In the end she stopped in a car park and told me that she would accept my offer to go home to my house for the time being.  In the end I asked her friend Keith to come over to see if we could remind her of who she was and where she was.  It worked to an extent but all through today she continued to act as if she were just a guest in her own home.  

One of the things I did learn this afternoon, when her friends Keith and Margo came over for tea was that this disassociation with who she is has been going on for more than a year.  Somehow I missed it and unfortunately, Keith who spent most time with her, never mentioned it.  If I had known I might have acted differently and she might be in a care home by now.  Ah well, no point dwelling on the past.  

I suppose that the important part of tough days is making sure that you learn from them.  Every day of this journey with my mother reinforces my conviction not to let this happen to my family.  I will go into care when the time is right with no complaints or arguments against.  I will start planning now for the next 10 to 20 years.  I will enjoy my present life for as long as I can but also look forward to the future with optimism.  In the meanwhile, I need a few jokes and funny stories to give me a laugh or two each day.

Still Trying to Find My Way Around Dementia

My mother and I have had a difficult 5 weeks.  I have been frustrated beyond belief and very stressed.  I haven't been as nice as I could have to her.  I've been angry with her.  When I'm not angry, she asks me why I am being nice.  That's a telling comment and one I am not proud of.  My oldest daughter tells me I should go with the flow but sometimes that is so difficult.  However I am beginning to learn how to do that in my own way. 

Today, GB waned to iron.  First I let her hunt for the iron and when she couldn't find it, I did.  I didn't offer to help initially because she wants to prove that she can do things herself.  I held my breath and hoped she didn't find the wall socket.  She didn't but she did come to collect water to put in the iron.  I had better remember to pour that out.  Then I suggested she get the ironing board.  In the end she gave it all up and moved on to putting new shoe laces in her trainers.  I learned from this.  Let her try to do things but don't offer help, keep an eye on her to make sure she doesn't injure herself, and let her feel some sense of accomplishment.  It amazed me that she wasn't frustrated by the difficulties she encountered.  She just moved on or went to sleep for a while.

So much damage

One of the things I have learned from being with my mother at this time, is that dementia harms more than just the person who has it.  And oh, how it damages them!  My mother's dementia probably started as long time ago as 10 or 15 years; and so much of what we have taken for granted about her for all this time was probably the result of the dementia unrecognised.  I can remember saying to people that my mother seemed to have lost a lot of her filters and put it down to growing older and being less willing to be tolerant.  She used racist language that I would never have heard from her when she was younger.  Moreover, she became far more critical of both family and friends, and people she encountered in the street.  If she felt someone was over weight, she said something about it and sometimes, she was quite cruel.  It seemed that those thoughts she would once have kept to herself, were now to be spoken aloud.

I have heard that a number of her grand children have been quite upset by her words and actions.  I don't think the she will ever have the opportunity to mend these relationships.  It is even possible that she forgets who they are as she has forgotten me.  However, perhaps one day they will come to understand that it was all part of the dementia and that she would be devastated if she realised what she had done.

Again it's been a long time

The title says it all and I won't add to that.  I have picked this blog up again because it seems to do me a lot of good writing here in times of stress.  I started it originally as a way of communicating with friends and family when I was diagnosed with cancer in 2006.  Now I think I will be using it to help me cope with living with my mother, who has dementia, during the  Covid-19 lockdown.

It has been very difficult.  I think that is one of the biggest understatements I have ever made.  I have even lost track of how long I have been here. I arrived in Thetford just days prior to the lockdown in late March when my mother's part-time carer had to self-isolate due to illness in the family.  I am still here and likely to be so for at least another 3 weeks.

25 things I want people to know about me...revisited

I haven't thought about this since 2009 but it is interesting to revisit it and see if I can possibly come up with 25 things that anyone other than me (and perhaps my family once I am dead and gone) would be interested in knowing.

My first in the 2009 blog was that I love New York, though not as much as Paris.  I am not sure if that is still true but I do like New York or at least the New York I remember from the last time I was there.  Then there is the question of the 100,000 words.  Still no book but creeping towards it.

So here goes:

1. I love New York but not as much as Paris and perhaps I love London more than either of them but that could have to do with familiarity.

2.  I haven't bothered counting how many words I have written since 2009 but still no book.  I do think that I am edging towards one though.  Interesting to see if I get anywhere with it by this time next year.

(This is the point when I wonder what anyone would be interested in knowing!  I have far more than 25 friends on Facebook now but how many are good enough friends that they would want to know more than the superficial.)

3.  If Beale Street Could Talk is one of my favorite books (as I have recently said on Facebook) and I can't help but wonder why I haven't reread it since the late 70s.

4. I wrote my master's thesis on a text written in Anglo Norman French (French spoken in Britain after the Norman Conquest).  As I didn't go on for a PhD, I don't suppose that it was specifically useful in the rest of my life but the skills I gained from doing it certainly were.

5.  I am a Star Trek fan and am loving Star Trek Discovery.  I have been a sci-fi fan since I was about 10 when I was given an adult library card and discovered the science fiction section along with Heinlein, Asimov, Larry Niven and so many more.

6. Though I do like being in New York, Paris and London, my favorite place in the world at the present time is Gladstone's Library in Flintshire.  I would give anything to spend a month there, or even a full week.

7. I have become both more and less tolerant as the years have progressed.  Funny how that happens.

8. I have few regrets but one of them (and it still haunts me...how silly) relates to an event when I was 16.  One morning, I grew impatient with waiting for my ride to school and took a ride with someone else.  No mobiles in those days to tell them what had happened.

9. I still have dreams about not having finished high school when I was admitted early to university.  Yes, I don't have a high school diploma and really why should that matter at my age.

(When I have a problem coming up with 10, 25 would be impossible.)

10.  I don't dream in French anymore.  Hopefully next month's visit to Paris will help with that!