Deborah Forster

Today was again full of thrashing wind. Makes you feel like you’re in a little tent hanging onto a high hill. In these last months, we’ve been trying to settle A’s 94-year-old mother Mildred into a nursing home because she could no longer live alone. She had been in the retirement village she picked out 15 years ago. And now that she was in the nursing home, it was very different.
My contribution to the change was a new teapot and mugs but it was thought the cups were ‘too much’, and too fancy, so I swapped them. Adjusting to her new life in the new place has made her angry, betrayed and furious and not worried about showing it. She yelled not to touch her when I reached for her hand in sympathy.

And at the other end of things, I collected my granddaughter Hazie today from child care and she was a bit thrown by seeing me instead of her mum. She’s small for her age. A serious baby girl who loves birds. When Mildred was Hazel’s age, she was in an orphanage.
The chaos with Mildred has been steady. Alternately sobbing and rambling about dying. ’Will this be the place I die?’ This is a question that could always be asked. But do we want to know the answer? Do we want to be sitting in our favourite chair watching re-runs of Doc Martin when the moment strikes? Or dribbling asleep in bed? All debatable. We know it’s coming for us regardless of our schedules.
Mildred was either going in for a lot of theatrics or it was a sudden worsening of dementia. Hard to tell. Spent five hours there today. After writing all morning, we got to the home. She said she found a diamond ring and refused to give it back. A dishevelled life on display. Dignity lost in confusion. Turns out it was her ring, and her son had no clue.
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I went to water the younger kids’ garden as they are away. The ruby crepe myrtle nodded like magic wands. In one pot there were eight tomatoes, fat and red and peppery and on the fence, ivy and snapdragons. The house is a little jewel box.
As I leave, the hissing of the night has begun, plants and animals at rest, except for the two owls sitting on the powerlines like bouncers just waiting for a possum.
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A solution has arrived: Mildred has gone to live at her daughter’s and seems instantly happier, though the daughter says she has no short-term memory. Soon she’ll go to live with another daughter. While A is dealing with his mother, I just slip into my own distance. In his absence, I forget to try to be a good wife so easily. Possibly always have forgotten.
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I went to the hardware for light globes and found them with the help of a man whose red glasses had just one arm. He looked like a crab. And tonight, the sky is laden with blankets of clouds but no rain. It’s dry down here in the real world and then, coming down the escalator at the hardware, the rain falls gently, always a memory of all the other rains in all the other years.
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Now I’ve gotten gastro again. Started in the night with an ache in the stomach and then by 10 pm it was on. Much vomiting. No sleep; wandering from room to room looking for somewhere to be. Resting today. Hazel has it too.
Alfie is clear of it, so we saw him today. So tall now. All a bit tired. We read books.
And then it rained again and the crickets were celebrating. The house could be floating on their songs. Someone is having a party at the local sports club, and the base washes out like waves. It probably won’t rain any more here in the short term, all the water has headed north as if magnetised. The garden seems to have had it. Summer is over; we’ve had maybe a few stinking days that fried everything. A is out at a party. This would have worried me once and now I just feel relief not to have to go. Would not worry me if I never went to another party for the rest of my life.

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Tonight a train, and then a jet, take to the frayed sky. Thoughts of the past are not quiet. They murmur through us, as real as ever. Thoughts of the future come after us, bringing the only truth: uncertainty.