God disposes

Categories: uncategorized

Date: 27 June 2008 21:50:36

This was the plan: I was going to get up earlyish on what is normally my 'day off from being a mum', go to Brent Cross shopping centre in time for coffee, then buy myself a gorgeous dress to wear at the Party of the Decade in Bucks tomorrow night, then take myself out for lunch and maybe get back home in time to go for tea at the London Mennonite Centre.

However, as they say, man (or woman) proposes, and you know the rest. What actually happened was that I got a rather distressed phone call from my 93 year old mother, saying that something strange had happened while she was wrestling with putting on her support stockings, and she could no longer remember the names of her neighbours, and had to look up my phone number because she couldn't remember that either. She wanted to warn me in time for me to put in place other arrangements for Genius Brat, who had been going to stay the night with her while we went to the Party of the Decade (she had also cancelled having nine friends round for tea).

She did indeed sound quite disoriented, and told me the same thing several times over, which is quite unlike her usual sharp self. She was very resistant of my going round there, and refused to go to the doctor, so I just said I'd ring her later, and thought I would still go shopping. However just then I got a call from Genius Brat's school saying that he wasn't feeling well and could I collect him. Bang goes leisurely day of lady of leisure.

Managed to put in my repeat prescription on the way to pick him up, so I won't run out of tablets next week, and took a pile of books to hand in for the bookstall at his school summer fair tomorrow. Took him home, rang up The Grouch and he said he could come home early. So I did eventually get to Brent Cross, where every self-respecting North London Jewish woman must be seen on a Friday. No new dress, however: one I couldn't get on, the other I couldn't get off, and the third made me look as though I was dressed in my daughter's clothes, had I had a daughter. Did manage to take back the two hoodies I had bought for GB and which he objected to purely because I had bought them.

On the way back I went to my Mum's and she seemed a lot more normal, though still worried and a bit vague. This has been quite a shock to me (and of course to her) as up to very recently she has been so well that I really hadn't registered just how very old she is (she did after all accept a computer from us for her 93rd!).

Now I have begun to think seriously about what we will do if she deteriorates rapidly, and whether I can cope with the whole process of getting her into some sort of care. It's also brought it home to me that her death can only be a few years away, if that, and that will be the end of her amazing, courageous, interesting life and character. She often drives me crazy, but I don't feel at all good at the idea that one day she won't be there any more. She has been such a powerful, dynamic and unignorable presence (minus five feet nothing and a domestic tyrant).

I suppose she spent so long trying to look after me, long beyond the date at which I wanted to be looked after (in fact about forty years beyond it) that it is very hard to adjust to the idea of looking after her.

In the meantime, we and another couple whom we are giving a lift to the party, will be praying hard for another babysitter for tomorrow night...