Mum didn't wake me until eleven and was very flustered. I had checked that there was money in her bag before bed (£15 left over from yesterday, no sign of the wallet) but this was now gone. I gave her the last ten pounds from her stash and we drew up the list and she left the house - however, she didn't let the door close, instead checking her bag one last time just outside the front door with the door sitting on the latch.
I could see this from where I was sitting on the sofa, so got up to check, and met her on the way back in. She told me there was no money, so we put the bag on the side in the kitchen to check - I was surprised to find there was now no money in the bag, neither the £10 from today or the £15 from yesterday.
We got everything out of the front pocket to double check - there was no sign of today's £10, but yesterday's £15 was there all along, wrapped thickly and tightly in used (for nose-blowing) toilet paper. When the wallet is missing (I should be looking for it now really, but legs feel like jelly) she has wrapped the money in the list before, but wrapping it in tolilet paper is one step closer to being lost.
What was worse was that she simply wouldn't let me take the money out of the toilet paper at all. We wrote £10 on it, but this could mean anything, I hope she finds it (I should have gone with her, but like I say my legs feel like jelly).
12.40pm
Mum got there and back in record time, with all the shopping. It doesn't seem possible - I wonder if she got a lift one way? I just sat down to write the previous sentence and local sister has arrived. I'd better go and say hello.
12.50pm
Mum sat down on the sofa to drink tea and I used the time to look manically for the wallet, money and advent calandar without getting Mum involved (she can't remember what she's looking for, but once involved in a search sometimes can't forget that she is looking for something, even when the thing is found. which can make her restless and more things can get lost as she moves them round in the process)
I found £10 and the advent calandar, but not the wallet.
There is an ongoing discussion between me and Local-sister as to the best way to handle the increasing frequency with which things are lost . Until the past few weeks I was very much behind having one of everything and keeping good track of it, but I now feel it would be better to have many identical bags and transparent wallets, and smaller denominations of cash, as by the time we have assembled one of everything the first thing we found will be guaranteed to be missing. Guaranteed. I just want to be able to send her to the shops and then look for missing things, without Mum getting involved in searching.
Either way these are all temporary plans. The clock is ticking.
2.20pm
The clock is ticking right next to my ear, the clock Local-sister bought in to remind we when 'Murder She Wrote' began.
I don't feel sad, just ill and tired. A fortnight ago I would have felt sad now, but Mum has not said she wants to die for several weeks. The reguarlity and lucidity with which she expressed this immensely increased, corresponding with the beginning of the Mirtazapine tratment, whether on not the drug was responsible, but now she seems happy again overall - with the excpetion of odd days like Monday. Now she veers between being too happy too wish this and not lucid enough to express it. Either way, and whatever the cause, she seems content for the time being. It could equally be that her overall happiness has increased because of my response (and that of 'the team'). Initially I became depressed myself - which, of course, made everything worse - but I pulled myself together and increased the level of care as inconspicuously as I could - it could be this, or this and the anti-depressants (or either, or neither, or both) that pulled her out of this pattern of suicidal ideation.
The clock is ticking. Tock. Tock. Tock. Tock. I move it, but it is still all I can hear.
After Local-sister left I cooked up a lasagne ready meal with chips and salad. We had apple pie and ice-cream for dessert. A lovely meal in front of the telly, there was no sadness or agitation from either of us.
We watched two dramas that Mum likes, 'All Saints' and 'Doctors', both set in hospitals. Both of them dealt with the theme of euthanasia. The former was fairly black and white, the person was old and in agony, with every disease in the book - they were clinging to life by a thread and suffering terribly.
The latter was very different, much more interesting. An eighteen year old boy had recently lost the use of his arms and legs and had booked himself in to end his life in Switzerland. He was completely sane and rational about it and would probably make the same decision in six months - yet nobody suggested the obvious compromise of a cooling off period, giving him some time to adjust. Cheap scriptwriters.
Mum was very vocal in both programmes, speaking about people's dignity, she is very firmly in favour of choice, as she always had been. During the second programme she said 'I think my mother went that way'. I said she had died at home in bed, of cancer. Mum said she had refused further treatment and wanted to die at home. Hm.
The clock is ticking, it is all I can hear. I take the batteries out.
This is one of the big questions I have spent my life addressing and researching .Nietschze was a proto-fascist and would have had the schizophrenics and people with learning difficulties, the people I work with and care for, killed. Without blinking an eye. Quality of life is more important than quantity, its true and there is much wisdom in his work. Yet he was also in favour of eugenics and was arguably one of the thinkers who made WWII possible. That I echo his work and try to solve these paradoxes is stated in the title of my book 'Beyond Truth and Fiction', echoing his volume 'Beyond Good and Evil'.
The clock is not ticking, but I have run out of time, I am going to Local-sister's for dinner and to take round some birthday cards. If you found this interesting and would like to read some more on a similiar theme but from a broader perspectvie and in a more provocative style try this link -
http://jesterspeaks.blogspot.com/2009/04/gospel-according-to-joker.html
Last night I contributed a post to a thread at indigosociety.com, 'What's Your Most Peaceful Dream?' -
"That's an intersesting question. Being of the revolutionary spirit most of the dreams I can recall are about The End of Time, perhaps I have peaceful dreams but don't remember them, you've really got me to scour memory. Ah!
Ah - I had a dream twenty years ago, when I was sixteen - I was in my bedroom in my Father's house, somehow we had acquired a plastic tray filled with an array of single doses of experimental psychedelic drugs in various capsules.
My father took one of the pills and I experienced his hallucination - I was a skull, floating in the void, and all my teeth were rhythmically jumping to the centre of my head and then back into place - over and over and over again.
Then I took a different capsule - I was lying down, again in the dark void. A bubble of light was forming around me, like a new moon progressing to full moon. I was in agony. The suffering became more and more unbearable as the illumination increased, as the circle of light came closer and closer to fulness. The pain was the most excruciating when the circle was almost complete - I wished that I would die and thought I surely would - yet when the circle was complete the torture terminated abrubtly. I was in a state of grace, of full illumination. The sense of peace was overwhelming, like nothing I had felt before, and it went on and on for what seemed like a blissful eternity. Mmmmm.
The more aware an individual becomes aware the more suffering and conflict one perceives. It is not until one sees the whole picture that the greater purpose can be understood and the conflict reconciled. Its bizarre yet elegant how all dreams make sense on both a microcosmic (personal) and macrocosmic level."
x
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