MONDAYS are when James goes to dementia day care, or as I like to put it rather more smartly ‘’the day James lunches at his Club’’ - a lunch James describes incidentally as ‘’okay, but not exactly haute couture…’’
And so it is on a Monday, while James is innocently playing carpet bowls and singing-along, that I revisit the residential home at the end of the road where he spent a week in respite care last summer.
Less hotel-smart but with a friendlier atmosphere than the residential unit James was discharged to from hospital a year ago, it is nevertheless spotlessly clean and endearingly comfortable: and the staff who cared for James had impressed me with both their kindness and their handling of a medical emergency while I was away in France for a short break.
So as a first port of call it is to Meadow View I go…
Being there behind poor James’ oblivious back makes me feel I am betraying him, and I have to concentrate as I trail behind the manager who shows me around.
Actually I am more familiar with the building than she realises because my father lived there for eight years half a lifetime ago.
But here I am back again, for my husband this time, not a parent, and suddenly -what had seemed merely an exploratory expedition - becomes all too real…
They have a vacancy for a large pleasant room overlooking the garden, and there is no need to assess James because they have his file from his previous stay.
I had thought we might be put on a waiting list for dead-men’s-shoes, or that James would need to pass some further scrutiny before they would agree to take him on.
But instead I am put on the spot.It seems I have only to name the day and all will be arranged…
I am momentarily blind-sided by the speed at which all this is happening. But, like Macbeth, I conclude that ‘if it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well / It were done quickly’…My tired mind is made up, and I know, in the end it will be the right decision for both of us.
‘Next Monday?’ I suggest tentatively.
So next Monday, just a week away, it is…
But even as I feel a rush of both sadness and relief that the long-dreaded decision has actually been made, I ask myself how I can break the news to James….
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That is very kind Alan…like everyone else in the same boat, I am muddling through…
The beauty of your writing and of your soul, as ever, shows the stars sparkling in the dark.
A way for some, if they need one, and soothing for many others, grateful for such lovely reflections.
Certainly I'm extremely grateful and soothed, recovering from my own similar experiences.
And so we grow.
Infinite love to you both; because it is.
Alan