Another door closes for mum.

This week dad came home with a form from the day care centre. He'd been asked to give it to me to fill in. I was struck by the perfect symmetry of this; I used to be given forms to bring home from school, which I gave to my parents to fill out.

The form in question is a feedback form, and has been sent in the acknowledgement that mum is not going to go to day care, and now everyone accepts this.

The questions and my answers are as follows:

1. Do you feel the assistance / support offered to you and the person you care for was of benefit to you? No.

Please tell us why or why not. I think Irene's dementia is too far advanced and she is no longer happy in groups. I was surprised by this but feel that everyone did what they could.

2. Please tell us if you had any concerns / difficulties with the service provided: I think if anything we might all have tried too hard and too many times to change Irene's mind.

3. Do you think that the service provided enabled the person that you cared for to remain at home longer? Impossible to say.

4. Do you have any suggestions to improve the services we provide? None. A great deal of effort was put into giving Irene every opportunity to make something of it.

5. Do you think it would have been beneficial to receive services earlier? Yes.

I guess we have all had time to get used to the idea that mum is too far gone. It is such a shame. She sits at home while every day on the other side of the block old ladies are getting together and enjoying themselves. A couple of them liked mum and were happy to 'talk' with her. She just couldn't cope with the situation.

I can sympathise with this. I remember when we were staying in Indonesia about 1972. My parents attended a predominantly American church while we were there. It was quite a culture shock to Greg and I. We were just not used to the forward and completely unreserved social behaviour of the American kids, and when they invited us to go on camp with them we panicked. We asked our parents to do whatever they could, anything, to have this offer withdrawn. If I try to put my finger on exactly what it was that freaked us out, it was partly the feeling that no matter what we said we would never be understood. That was just part of it. Another problem was the phenomenon of being asked for my opinion all the time. That was something I just wasn't used to, and consequently, I had no real opinions to voice. I think mum was experiencing a similar set of anxieties. She knew she couldn't put what she felt into words, and she knew she couldn't properly answer any questions.


But perhaps in our case it was simply that though we had met the American kids a couple of times they were not yet our friends and until they belonged to that special category we could not face being thrown together with them. We were so much more reserved, we took a much longer time to get to know someone before we invited them to places with us. I think mum needs a very long time to get comfortable with others, and I think that time started a long time ago.