What Remains

A strange dream.

That her nursing home had been a space station and that I was still there, supposed to be 

packing up all her stuff, and all the things I had taken there. Ambivalent. Liking the people
there and the place. Apprehensive of the journey home (I don’t like the travelling bit of
travel…). Writing a note to my husband : “ I am not coming back”.  Scoring out the “not.”

I miss her. Just two of us now for Sunday lunch. Something thrown together rather 

than planned beforehand. No Perry Como playing. 

But who is it I miss? Gone before the process of dementia could do its worst, she was 
different from the person I’d known before. In the eighteen months before leaving sheltered
housing, she was often a young and loving mother busy with family - buying extra fish,
peeling extra potatoes, preparing food for them as they slept, waiting for them coming home,
laughing as she watched her boy play outside “making cheeky faces at me through the 
window”, contemplating walking up to the shops “with the baby in the buggy”. Happy,
contented.
Away from her house, for short times, her boy was still her focus - worried about
him being on his own, wondering if he had his keys.
But also, she was a loving daughter, with thoughts full of her parents. Sleepy during the 
day because they had been round the night before with friends. Setting off her door 
alarms in the early hours of the morning and explaining over the phone: “we’re having a
great time here - it’s a good laugh”. 
And the thoughts often turning to concerns - setting off so often to see her parents, to 
help her dad look after her mum. At times not feeling safe at home - packing bags to go to her parents: “if I can just get there, I’ll be OK”. 
And, in the nursing home, wondering if her parents knew that she was there; wistful when
no card came from them for her birthday; anxious still about not being there to help her
dad; asking us, when she was unwell, if we had let her mum know. 
Love  - for her son, her husband, her young brothers, her parents - was topmost in her mind,
when dementia had stripped everything else away.
And so the woman I miss is a love-filled mother and that love-filled daughter; trust in her
voice when I took hankies out the drawer for her, or took biscuits out of a cupboard for her,
or, on cold mornings, put a hat on her head and she told me that her mother had left them
there for her.

Love. It's never wasted. It's what remains.

"And now, these three remain; faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love" (1).






Footnotes:
(1) https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+corinthians+13%3A13&version=NIVUK 

Gone

She has been gone now over two months.

Recently her son, my husband, returned home from a ten day trip. 

So lovely to see him; catching up, asking questions. 

But that question did not come

- the now needless, “and how has Mum been?”.

Even as I knew it would not, I waited for it and felt its absence.

Missed in its not asking and missed in its not answering, 
two more absences forming round the space where she had been.

The Happiness of the Here and Now

A dry Saturday afternoon, scents of spring and birdsong in the air. In the nursing home, I find her in her room.
"Would you like to go out for a wee while?"
"Oh, I'd love to go out. I've not been out since ...Sunday!"
Wednesday's visit to the heritage centre for tea, cake and a wander round the shop gone then. And Friday's time at the day centre, with their usual outing, also missing.
Outdoor clothes assembled, we make our escape. The waitress in the cafe is smiling and kind and directs us to a booth. We sit waiting for our order with a table for four between us. I can't ask questions about the morning or lunch - it's not fair when she can't remember. We stall in our conversation and we smile at each other. Looking in my bag I find a small, bright pink, power-ball and roll it towards her on the table. Pleased, she rolls it back, and, alert, she follows my fingers as I return it. Smiling and completely unselfconscious, she continues the game for several minutes, totally absorbed. Perfectly happy in the here and now.