….it’s my mother, as DH and I often say when things happen.
And things are happening almost daily now with mum. She gets an idea in her head and can’t let go of it; we tell her the real version and within a few minutes she is telling us again of her rather skewed account.
Mum has not been eating much of her evening meals lately that my sister makes and puts in her freezer for her. The carer always ask her in the morning what she would like for tea and takes it out of the freezer to reheat at the 3 o’clock visit. She has been wasting quite a few meals recently having them heated up but then not eating them but opting to eat more cake and sandwiches instead and like last weekend asking for a Weetabix once the meal had been cooked which is quite wasteful. Needless to say my sister is not impressed after spending time cooking and providing meals for her. Anyway the long and short of this was a week of phone calls to me with mum accusing a carer of telling my sister she was eating Weetabix instead of her meal to cause trouble, which was not the case.
That was last week, and now she seems to have let go of that and developed a new, equally bizarre story this week with mum telling me she hopes she doesn’t have a Christmas like last year…it was the worst Christmas she has ever had! She sobs every time she tells me as she thinks, again mistakenly, that when she went to my sister’s on Christmas day last year (as she does every year), that my sister was ill in bed and her husband ‘had to do the best he could’ to feed and entertain her. She then reckons that no-one went to see her on Boxing day and she was left on her own. Well actually, my sister was not ill at all on Christmas day – it was a normal Christmas and we went up to see my mum on Boxing Day and spent the whole day with her until about 6pm when the carer came to help her to bed. So where she has got these ideas from I do not know.
There has been a noticeable decline in her mental state recently and for the last two weeks she has just begun to ring me at night after the last carer leaves at 7 o’clock after helping her to bed. She keeps ringing mainly to test her phone is working over and over like someone checking their door is locked. The most comical is when she rings me to help her over the phone to try and get a program on the TV. I tell her over and over the number of the channel and the time of the program until she finally brings it up on the telly (I can hear down the phone if she has got the correct one). Then everyday she will say to me I couldn’t get Vera on last night there must be something wrong with my TV! Sometimes you just lose the will….
It is hard to appreciate just how much her brain and thinking is so muddled now and full of absurd things, mixed with anxiety and paranoia. Dementia is a terrible affliction and difficult for those around her dealing with it, she often leaves us all exasperated.
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In between I have been busy though; both helping elder daughter with her epic move of the century and crafting for the Crisis coffee morning at church which helps to raise money for the homeless, we also spent an enjoyable morning at a lino cutting workshop I had booked for DH and I, carving out a lino cut design for my Christmas card this year.
It felt good to do something just for ourselves.
I had little time to produce something for the craft stall; I had been making some pomanders in the evening and using the transfers I got from The Works I decorated some small candles. So it was a start.
I also printed out and hand coloured the original snowdrop design I had made for the lino cutting session to make some new cards.
My idea was to assemble a few Christmassy items together and pop them into a box that could then be given as a gift to a friend. Each box to contain a homemade pomander, 2 small decorated candles, a pack of 4 handmade cards, 4 gift tags, 2 Christmas chocolates and a tiny Angel, (well everyone needs an Angel at Christmas) from a garland I happened to have.
Many long time readers might remember the little boxes I made for a previous Crisis event in 2023. If you want to see more of these click here.
….and I decided to carry on the theme again this time but not having any suitable boxes I used some rather lovely little handmade Indian paper bags I found in Homesense.
The pomanders and candles I wrapped in some Christmas tissue and slipped the cards into a cellophane wrapper.
A picture of the contents was placed in the bag so everyone could see what was included.
I called them ‘A little bag of Christmas’ and I am told had I done more they could have sold more.
Must go now, my evening meal awaits and I won’t be asking for a Weetabix instead!
Hope you all have a lovely week…thank you for reading…I will be back soon. x
where the journey takes me 2 