Phew! Hot, humid and busy ... After an elderly relative arrived I was conscripted for both child-minding and caring duties. No wonder my host found this difficult when he had to do both for an extended period over winter. After a few more days another relative came up for a few days, so even though I was back home for Christmas it was nice to have the whole family together in one place, which hasn't happened for a few years.
I remember as a young child that my father's single aunt was in a nursing home with advanced dementia and did not even recognise her own family members. This made a vivid impression on me. This was the same great-aunt that I also remember some time earlier saying to me how impressed she was with my achievements and that she was sure that I would "amount to something". It is always much more gut-wrenchingly awful to experience the slide into dementia of a loved one at first hand, and this is what one elderly relative has been going through over the past few years. Once a vibrant, intelligent, witty, capable and resourceful woman (including making beautiful ballet costumes) who raised three children as a single parent, she is now frail and extremely forgetful and has had several serious falls. In some respects she is fortunate still to be alive as she has suffered both a fractured neck of femur and a fractured pelvis due to osteoporotic bones. It is incredibly sad as well as being challenging to care for her and keep her from harm, and when you have friends with parents of a similar age who are still in very good shape mentally and physically you cannot help but think about what she could have been like.
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