I'm in Cedars Bakery, High Street, Preston. Just had half a sumptuous chicken pie that contained some surprise potato that I haven't bolused for but hopefully the 7 k slightly hilly cycle home should take care of that. That's if I can bring myself to leave this warm haven and go home. Al isn't home until this evening which leaves me and mum.
If you read back through my posts, skipping the France bit, you'll know that my mum is quite lovely but that I'm having difficulty sharing my house with her and her 'memory loss' - the euphemism for dementia.
She's been back with us now for a week and it's hard work. She demands attention. She can't just 'be'. She needs reorienting every morning and it's all about mum.
I started working parttime a couple of years ago for my health's sake, so I could wind down from my stressful secondary teaching job. Now, though, I've lost my weekends and my days off. If I'm not constantly attending to mum and answering her repetitious questions about how much her house is worth, where she lives, whether there's anyone else in the house and who is that man in the kitchen - Al - how to work the washing machine and a myriad other inane questions she gets the huff.
'You need not worry about me any more,' she'll say, cross, pouting, frowning, pseudo 'in charge'. 'I will find my own place to live.'
But that isn't an option. She would need to live in supported accommodation. I've checked out a few places and they're not for my mum.
At my house she can safely go to the supermarket or walk down to the local shops. I even got her to go to the Anglican Church two blocks away yesterday. She's always gone to church. I'm hoping she can find a community of support that doesn't involve sitting around with old people wearing bad dentures trying to tap a balloon into a waste basket.
Meanwhile I'll keep cycling, trusting she's okay alone and knowing she'll have forgotten how angry I was when I left her an hour or so ago.
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