Thanks everyone.
Today I was thinking how I used to keep a written journal, which is always useful in making sense of the world we encounter day to day. Over the last few years TP has become my only journal.
Life has had been harder than I thought it could be once a parent died and the other needed help and support. I know not everyone has great relationships with their parents, but as things panned out the parent I got on with and who's companionship I enjoyed survived. That isn't to say I didn't love my dad, but he was not an easy man to deal with in later life, full of regret, whereas my mum had an entirely different outlook -she was always thankful for what she had, rather than what she didn't have.
When I moved back home it was after dad's first encounter with cancer and at that stage mum was changing, very subtle things but as I later found out she had been formally diagnosed with Alzheimer's. She never accepted it, at a time when she still could comprehend cognitively a diagnosis, to her it was never going to change a thing. She kept it secret only discussing her memory exercises and difficulties with me, and when we went out no one one have known mum had dementia in the early days.
In 2015, one night while I was at work, unknown to me dad drove himself unwell 15 miles to the hospital, leaving mum at home, he never returned home and suddenly I had a funeral to arrange, three weeks after dad was admitted to hospital. He was unlucky on the cancer front, having battled melanoma into remission he subsequently died from a new primary that had spread so quickly by the time it was diagnosed it was too late. This same pattern later followed my sister recently, passing away from a second cancer so aggressive nothing could be done. It horrified me that my sister who helped mum and me should pass and yet my brother who has been nothing but selfish and difficult should survive -how can this be? But here we are just the two of us left, my mum and me.
I read so much the dilemma people have in making the decision about placing someone we love into a care home, and it is difficult. I look back now and I am glad I helped mum to stay at home for as long as possible given all that I have experienced in the last years. It is tempting to define a person by their illness, but in doing so we dehumanise being human. There are financial worries, in my own struggle I was met with a hidden problem of an equity release to boot, just when I thought it would all become easier. I also gave up my own life to care for my mum, and yes I would do it again for someone who means so much to me personally, but I also recognise some people can't for whatever reason. In the end I can only say this, we can only do our best, whatever that may be always remembering we are battling a disease not a person, but this disease makes it so much more harder than any other, because when it matters most they can no longer assist.