A Question of Time

Today she turns 78.  Chances are this will be her last birthday.  Yesterday we were informed that she’s on an end of life pathway (from the last time she was discharged from hospital).  My parents are devastated, as am I.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen my dad express as much emotion in my entire life as he has done at her suffering and treatment.

Such a brilliant, funny, headstrong and caring woman; and now she’s wasting away in a care home.  She managed a care home for years.  She knows how they work.  She doesn’t want to sit in the day room because ‘they all talk twaddle in there’.  So she stays in her room, barely awake.  She’s given up and I am sad.  She had been so strong.  She fought through every single thing that life threw at her, and then some.

And now, she’s basically lost to us, depressed and lonely and sad.  She’ll go to her grave not knowing her house had been put on the market by people who, had they waited a couple of months, could have legitimately done so rather than doing it slyly and without her knowledge.  But enough of that, I suppose.  I guess it doesn’t really matter anymore.  Now is just a question of time.  I don’t want her to suffer.

I’ll raise a toast to you later on; I love you with all my heart.