Day 3,741 in the Nanny June Care Home

The One with the Fear, Anger and a Nice Cup of Tea.

We are existing like Covid is over but it is not.

By the time I had mentally prepared myself for another visit it was Mother's Day and the perfect timing to see a Nanny June.

But that was the day I tested positive for Covid. Happy Mother’s Day to me!

And Nanny June, who had flowers delivered by post. Hopefully.

And then we waited as everyone in our family took it turns to get ill with Covid and recover. There are five of us in our house so it took a while until we were all clear. So Nanny June had to wait. Then it was Easter and we were away, so Nanny June had a chocolate delivery left early so it could be quarantined.

Even when I don't see her, this weirdly woven life with a dementia-struck Nanny June doesn’t ever stop even if the visits do, I think of her A LOT. I manage her finances and there are routine care plan reviews and DOL’s assessments. It was a routine phone call with the nursing staff for a care plan review that I found out the visiting rules had been relaxed.

Then there were just no excuses left. Valid reasons though they were, they had made it easy for me to put off going. It’s hard to not be wanted.

Even the smallest rejection in life hurts, maternal rejection is I think is one of the worst kind of this sort of pain. The person who brought you into this world doesn’t want you in it, or at least in their version of it. Being wanted by your mother is a fundamental essence of survival and their rejection is hugely counter intuitive.

Building emotion resilience in these situations is tough for anyone.

She is agitated when I arrive. Anxious and wanting to be left alone. But she lets me sit next to her on the bed. She tries to leave but is persuaded to stay with my repeated empty promises of a nice cup of tea and some cake.

I show her the flowers I bought her (three times). She is visibly happy to have them. I explain that I have bought them because I am her daughter and I love her. I mention Baby Elizabeth and something somewhere clicks. I ask to hold her hand and and she lets me. I had a little cry, that’s the first physical contact with her in well over two years.

A second later she takes her hand away and refuses permission to let me hold it again.

I am angry and guilty in equal measure. Guilty I haven’t been for the last few weeks. Angry I didn’t know the Covid protocols had been relaxed. Angry that Covid has destroyed the fragmented life and conversation we had. Angry that the Easter chocolate I left for her has been abandoned in her room, unopened and still in the gift bag. So I get that out and put it in obvious and unsubtle plain sight.

My fictitious cup of tea and a cake are still nowhere to be seen, so Nanny June decides it’s time to go.

Since Covid, visits mean I have had to go around the outside of the building and enter through a fire escape like I was being sneaked in past the staff having their fag breaks in the cold. Now I am not just allowed into the care home, I am allowed all around the care home, as long as I wear a mask.

We wander aimlessly around the care home corridors, checked in on by staff. Tea and cake is now genuinely on its way but Nanny June is back in another orbit of reality, lost from me in time and space.

I have missed my chats with residents and there are no familiar faces now after two years. I used to meet the same residents in the same places and have the same chats, while they were meeting me for the first time, each time.

Today I met a lovely human, (genuinely for the first time) wearing her housekeeping tabard and walking around muttering “duw, duw” (dear, dear) and wondering when ‘they’ would be in from work. A dog eared card was in her apron pocket, and she proudly showed me this card and admitted she had no idea who it was from. But so lovely we said, with beautiful roses on the front. Anyway she tutted and muttered and checked what time it was and which way was home and off she went.

By now I had actually lost Nanny June, not because she moved fast (quite the opposite) but I had to stop and have the important chat about a card. While Nanny June deposited herself in a chair with very little ease and even less grace. For someone not so in touch with reality she was relying heavily on the laws of gravity to get in her that chair. Meanwhile, I chat to the lovely staff. They admit Covid has drastically impacted residents speech and socialisation skills, due to such limited interaction for so long, but now there are well-being workers who are there solely to socialise and spend time with the residents.

Despite her poor speech and absent social skills, Nanny June is strong and assertive for someone who turns 91 soon. But then maybe you don’t get to 91 without being so strong and assertive.

Hopefully this new normal restores some routine and with it, Nanny June will learn to tolerate my company a little longer next time.