Author: Jenny’s Brave New World!

It’s been almost two months since I ‘retired’. I’m still not warming to that word. I remember speaking to a colleague at the beginning of the year when I was thinking of resigning. ‘You mean retiring’ was his immediate response. Being a couple of years younger than me he added another comment which I found really sad. ‘I just can’t face moving into the final stage of my life!’

This ‘final stage’ holds no fear for me. It could easily be the best stage! Hopefully it will be longer than my ‘angst’ ridden teenage years or even the following ten years in an unsuitable marriage.

So, as part of this new and exiting journey, I have decided that I’ll do something that makes me happy every day. This sounds selfish but won’t be at the expense of anyone else. It could be a walk with friends, out for lunch, just being able to enjoy a cup of tea in our Teak House, a thatched wooden circular building at the bottom of the garden. It’s a realistic target and can be easily met with little effort.

The sun is shining today, the ground is wet as we have experienced a typical English summer over the last few days. It has brought immense relief to humans as well as animals and plants!

I’m walking with friends this afternoon and will jog home. Jogging is my personal fight against dementia. There are days when I feel as if my chest will burst just trying to breathe! But the exertion gets the blood pumping up to my brain and my ‘fitbit’ goes into overdrive!

So the walk with friends will make me happy and the run home will give me the satisfaction that I have done something to stave off an awful, debilitating, cruel disease. It’s ‘win’ ‘win’! 👠

After a most enjoyable meal with friends I met 16 years ago at a ‘Management Training Course’ I visited my mother.

My sister and her husband had just spent a couple of weeks in the UK (they live in Australia), and had regularly visited her. I joined them on most of these visits so my mother saw her two daughters together. She recognised both of us but has long forgotten our relationship, just that we are ‘one of us’ as she has told me when questioned in the past.

So I was very surprised when I walked into the care home and my mother rushed over to me, grabbed my hand and told me that she thought I’d gone away and she would never see me again! I have been back to the care home since my sister left so didn’t immediately understand her concern. It was only later, driving home, that I thought about a connection between my sister’s visit and subsequent departure and my mother’s fear of abandonment. Once more, there is no way that this makes any sense, but dementia makes no sense! I can only surmise that her two daughters must have merged into one, and that the one had left.

After a relaxing, wet weekend (yes, I’m still loving this rain!) it’s Monday morning. I used to hate Mondays! Not anymore! Monday is the start of a new week and new choices on how to spend my time. The sun is back and the garden looks beautiful. That’s where I’ll be today. 👠

I have achieved my first goal to work for charities, primarily Alzheimer’s and Dementia. I was going to find a course to give exercise classes to residents in care homes. As luck would have it, a very good friend of mine is an ex PE teacher. She had the same idea when she retired so I supplied the music and yesterday morning my friend gave her first class to my mother and the residents in her care home.

It was a resounding success. My friend was really good, gauging the abilities of the class, most of whom are suffering from dementia and varying physical disabilities. She started with a gentle warm up and I supplied ABBA’s Dancing Queen. ABBA is so popular with all age groups so I uploaded an album onto my iPhone. Gradually, with encouragement and a number of carers joining in, we managed to get most residents doing the gentle moves, albeit some needing more encouragement than others!

And then we have my mother! Physically very well and easily able to perform all the exercises. Instead, she decided to ‘play up’ and refused to participate. Once more, I felt like a mother embarrassed because her child was misbehaving! Nothing I said changed her mind. She called the moves pathetic and sat petulantly staring at my friend, stubborn and immovable!

After the initial embarrassment, I resigned myself, once more, to the changes this awful disease has inflicted on my poor mother. So many times, throughout the last few years, Mum’s erratic, often bizarre behaviour is so out of character and she would be mortified if she knew what she was doing. A proud, restrained and impeccably dressed woman with strict morals is often barely recognisable as the still beautiful, we’ll-dressed (I have made sure of that) person I have now come to know.

But, today the sun is shining. I have ‘booked’ a carer to come with me when I take Mum to her favourite tearoom in a beautiful Cheshire village. Unfortunately I can’t risk taking her out on my own. She is physically very strong and I am unable to restrain her if necessary. But I can still take her out, which is good. We’ll sing to Elvis and I’ll leave Mum feeling happy and relaxed. The best we can expect under these cruel circumstances! 👠

On Monday I had lunch with two ex colleagues, very good friends. One had already left the company and the other still working there.

So it was a mixed dynamic, but very interesting. My two friends are the same age as my daughter. Both have young children so both need a regular income. But, despite the age difference and their different circumstances, all three of us were content, happy and really enjoyed our time together. The sun was shining, holidays were imminent and the summer stretched before us promising days of rest and relaxation and balmy evenings sipping cocktails watching steaks sizzling on the barbecue.

So there I was, listening to my two excited friends, both taking time off in August, one jetting off to Spain and the other to her caravan in Wales. But I was already enjoying a long relaxing summer holiday which had begun on the 8th June and will last as long as this unusually hot and dry summer weather will allow!

I’m meeting another two friends for lunch on Friday. One has recently retired and the other is self employed. Once more the joy of having time during the day to meet friends feels like an indulgent luxury, but I’m worth it! Of course I am! Sometimes I do feel a tiny pang of guilt, but then I move on ….. 👠

Today I went to. my first ever flower show. The weather forecast was good (warm) and my friends were great company. I didn’t have to drive so could sit at the back of the car and relax.

I’ve seen television footage of the Chelsea Flower Show so pictured themed gardens with stunning examples of horticultural skills. I was also looking forward to getting ideas for my own garden and possibly coming home with a few plants to fill gaps left by the current heat wave.

I wasn’t expecting masses of pop-up stores selling food, clothing, gin (not that I mind an occasional gin!), cheeses, garden furniture, wooden chalets, food, drink, the list is endless. There were some excellent school gardens based primarily on artists and a handful of aforesaid themed gardens, but they were few and far between.

There was a large under cover plant stall which housed some amazing examples of perennials, ferns, trees, bulbs, cut flowers etc and these stands were the closest that I got to my vision of a flower show.

But, it was a good day out with friends, albeit a bit too commercialised! I did, however, buy a stunning rose called ‘Nostalgia’ which has a deep red edge to the petals and a cream centre. It also has a deliciously sweet smell which is rare in new hybrid varieties.

It is Thursday afternoon. I didn’t spend the morning sitting at a desk answering emails and peering at a spread sheet through the glare of a computer screen! The outing this morning is not a complaint, just not what I had imagined! But still enjoyable and significantly better than being at work! 👠

Yesterday afternoon I visited my mother in her care home. She is five years down the awful, debilitating Alzheimer’s road of no return. I have gone through the many stages that families with loved ones battling this evil disease have gone before. The loss, unfairness, panic and despair that hit me with the diagnosis still haunts me. The caring for, huge concern and final decision to put Mum in a care home came with significant guilt. I had to keep on balancing this guilt with knowing that Mum will be safe and well looked after, which was not the case in her own home. Her heartbreaking pleas to take her back home lasted over a year. Many times after leaving her I’d be in floods of tears and full of recriminations. Perhaps I should have tried to get more carers to keep her in her own home for longer? But this was proving very costly and I was holding down a full time job with minimal assistance. My overriding concern for her safety and a psychological assessment left me with little choice. My sister, daughter and I researched and visited a number of care homes. Seeing the different stages of the disease made these visits, with their security gates and secure little gardens, even more heart-wrenching.

But my daughter and I did finally walk into a shabby, yet homely large old house and knew we had found Mum’s new home. It’s not perfect, nothing remotely connected to this awful disease could be, but, three years down the line Mum has gained weight, looks healthy and is keeping well. We have good and bad days. I visit a little old lady who looks like my mother. I ensure she is being well looked after and still take her to our favourite tea room once a week. We sing along to Elvis in the car and she still recognises me. I leave Mum with a good feeling, because feelings have replaced her memories. I take each day as it comes. Mum has a good quality of life and seems happy most of the time. We are where we are. We can’t ask for more. 👠

I know this sounds a bit naff but I went for a walk on Friday afternoon. Nothing unusual in that but I usually jog and it’s always been at the end of a week day and I’m stressed and tired. To walk my jog route was a challenge because I’m impatient and it would take much longer! But I’ve hurt my back, not a usual war wound! Could be linked to housework? We had some rain in the morning and the first thing that hit me was the smell. It was almost overpowering. It was probably an infusion of rotting vegetation and weeds, no roses or delicious smelling plants or shrubs down a Cheshire country lane, but heady and delicious nonetheless! Throw in butterflies, birds song and no traffic noise, with time to really look around without just battling to regulate my breathing, Friday afternoon needed to be shared! 👠

Waking up this morning I open the curtains and heave a huge sigh of relief. It’s raining. My how my life has changed! It’s Friday morning, raining and more in the forecast. Okay, so my garden looks like a desert so this is a welcome relief, but rain on a Friday and over the weekend was never good news. I only had two days to enjoy the great outdoors! But now I have seven, so bring it on!

No longer having a job meant that I had to give up my cleaners. I can’t pretend that this filled me with pleasure! So I bought a Fitbit and break the ‘chores’ down into daily hourly slots and get a significant boost to my ‘steps’. All good!

So roll on the weekend, wet or dry, it doesn’t matter! The joy of being ‘retired’! 👠

Family have left and the morning has finally arrived. I. have seen my husband off to work and the day is mine. No month end deadlines, no perpetual pinging of emails and, most importantly of all, no queuing traffic to get into work on time!

Instead, I am quietly commiserating with England, not hearing colleagues, (all qualified managers!), regurgitating every missed opportunity!

The summer sun continues to shine. The weather forecast shows a chance of a shower which will be welcome. Today I visit my mother, who has Alzheimer’s! I have arranged for a carer to accompany us on a visit to a small village tea-room. And it’s a Thursday morning! 👠

I decided that the best way to kick start this new beginning was to go on holiday. But there was an added bonus to this decision! I’m in Boston in the US visiting my son, daughter-in-law and two gorgeous grandchildren! Although I haven’t seen the children since last October, within minutes it felt as if we lived ‘just down the road’. Add in warm sunshine, blue skies and super company, the world is my oyster! 👠