2010 – 2014 | My mother was never happy in the care facility

My mother was never happy in the care facility. Years later, looking back, I realised that she had never really been happy anywhere after the day my father died and she had to pack up and leave their flat. She had only ever been happy when she and my father were together.

My father was her home, her heart, the great love of her life. Wherever he laid his head on his pillow at night, that was where her home was. They had been married for almost half a century. For the rest of her life, she made everyone around her miserable because her own heart and life were so empty.

I wish I had understood sooner how deeply she was grieving. I would not then have spent so many years carrying the guilt of believing that I was somehow not “enough”. Sometimes I jealously wished I had known even a little of that kind of happiness myself. At least she had known that kind of happiness. But more than anything, I wish I had known how to comfort her simply by being near her. I realise now that she resented Daniel, and to some extent my children too, because they took up so much of my time. But how many pieces and fragments of myself could I share out before I would simply fall apart?

On the second day after we had settled her into the home, she phoned me and insisted that I come and fetch her because “all these old people here are going to drive me mad”. She was already in her nineties.

Before my mother was admitted, Karen and I had personally visited the home, inspected all the facilities, and made sure in advance that she would be in good hands. I was concerned about both her physical and mental well-being. The home was better equipped than we had expected, neat and clean, and we were satisfied with the security measures.

Unfortunately, we now had to restrict my mother’s freedom a little, because otherwise she would simply walk away. She had never been the sort of person to submit herself to authority and would find a way around any rule she disliked. For the first few weeks she was accommodated in the unit where most of the residents were already in their nineties, and some were suffering from dementia. Her mind was still perfectly clear, or so I thought, but unfortunately she had very little patience with people who were a little slow on the uptake.

At first she had to share a room with another elderly lady who, admittedly, was somewhat trying. She wanted to talk all day about everything under the sun. More than once a day, my mother had to sort out all the strings of beads the woman had tangled into a hopeless mess, and she would rummage through my mother’s overcrowded cupboards looking for sweets. My mother was accustomed to having a large room of her own where she could read and listen to music in peace, and the old lady’s behaviour drove her up the wall. Understandably. I spoke to the matron, and my mother was given another roommate.

The next roommate kept her television blaring all day. The one after that refused to allow the bedroom window to be opened, and my mother simply could not cope with the lack of fresh air. Literally every few weeks, we moved her belongings to another room, only for a new problem to emerge, until eventually the matron placed her in another section in a private room. And then the great loneliness descended on her again.

Another problem at the care facility, of course, was that she was expected to eat her meals at the dining table. She cried about it for days because, apparently, she had got into arguments with the other residents sharing her table over which church they belonged to. It is a strange thing, the way elderly people can go for one another over the smallest things. Except that, for my mother, religion was never a small thing. My father had based his entire life on the Bible, as he understood it, and she had followed him. She almost came to blows with one of the men in the home who took exception to a picture of Jesus that she had stuck to the back of her Bible. He threatened to tear it off. She threatened to tear his head off. She came perilously close to getting herself expelled from the home, and we had to do some serious smoothing over.

She also refused to eat the food prepared at the home because she still believed that she suffered from IBS. She made sandwiches for herself at my house and took them with her to eat in her room. Unfortunately, she stored them in her drawers, forgot about them, and attracted ants. It was a repeat of the arguments we had at home when she first moved in with us.

We spoke to the matron again, and they arranged to serve her the boiled chicken leg and vegetables that her supposedly prescribed diet required. It was a pity, because the home’s food was genuinely well prepared and attractively presented.

Not many years later, she complained to us that she was being served such watery, tasteless food while all the other residents were enjoying delicious meals. Somewhere along the way, the diet had apparently been forgotten, and she ate at the dinner table without any complaints.

We did not abandon her to her fate. Every evening after work I would make a quick visit to see whether she was settled or needed anything. At weekends we fetched her and took her along on our usual family outings. Christmas and her birthday were celebrated festively at our house every year. We made our own sushi and samosas, and she loved them. She had her own biscuit tin, which she filled with little biscuits and took back with her to “the hostel”. That was what she called the care home, accusingly. We had turned her into a “hostel brat”.

I could never decide whether my mother was simply bored during the day or deliberately caused trouble so they would have a reason to throw her out. There was, for example, the time when the entire facility was freshly painted inside, and all the cupboards were varnished. The moment my mother noticed, she scraped the varnish off with her nail file and a broken ruler, then smeared Vicks onto the wood. When we arrived, she proudly showed us how beautifully her cupboards were now shining.

I was speechless.

She began complaining about her eyes, so I had a new pair of reading glasses made for her at considerable expense. Privately, of course. Unfortunately, she had only about 40% vision, but I hoped the glasses would help. My mother was not so sure. She began using the other residents’ glasses instead, and more than once we had to empty out her cupboard and return the glasses to their rightful owners. She smashed her own expensive new glasses with a stone outside in the garden. When the staff asked her about it, she told them that they were a “useless” old pair that she could not see a thing through.

Then she began complaining that the workers were stealing her possessions, and she started setting “booby traps” for them under her bed and inside her cupboards. She would, for example, leave glasses of water in her wardrobe and drawers. We even found pieces of broken glass in her drawers. She began wrapping all her possessions in serviettes or toilet paper and stuffing them into any little box she could find to “hide” them.

Then she started hiding the key to her cupboard so that nobody could rummage through her things. Unfortunately, she would forget where she had hidden the key, and we would receive a phone call asking us to bring our spare. We had several sets of new keys cut during that period. But my mother soon realised that this was a quick and easy way to get us to come to the home. Eventually I emptied her cupboards and took most of her possessions back to my house. Then I threw away the keys and left the cupboards unlocked.

I was at my wits’ end and had no idea which way to turn. Something was wrong, and I went back to the doctor. He prescribed tranquillisers, with a warning that they were addictive.

Yes, AND?

My mother was almost ninety-four. Surely, at that age, she was entitled to become addicted to something if it gave her a better life. The medication helped enormously, and she definitely benefited from the treatment. There were many days when I wished I could have had a few of those pills myself.

Karen wasn't happy at work and resigned to complete her B.Com studies. I was not happy with my life, and I ended up in ICU for the second time with atrial fibrillation. The cardiologist called it a “runaway heart”. I was put on new medication, a beta-blocker that I took for a long time afterwards. I realised that I was going to have to do something about my quality of life.

Daniel’s health was also beginning to deteriorate. He was in a great deal of pain, and his medication seemed to transport him to another planet. He would, for instance, turn on the garden hose to water the lawn and then simply forget about it. The resulting water bills nearly took my breath away.

In an attempt to relax, Karen and I would occasionally “escape” for a few days and go on holiday — to Mauritius, the Kruger National Park, and far away to the dry, dusty Namaqualand. I began following a strict diet and lost about ten kilograms by walking long distances and cycling with her.

I also began making fewer appearances at the care facility, and Karen took over as caregiver. She began looking after both her father and her grandmother while I was at work, and even became involved in the home’s programs aimed at stimulating residents with dementia and possible Alzheimer’s. On sunny days, Karen and Genis, our poodle, spent time with Grandma in the beautifully maintained gardens of the home. As long as Genis was on a leash, clean and properly brushed, he was welcomed at the home by the staff and all the residents.

Physically, things were getting better for me. Mentally, however, I was withdrawing more and more from society. I had lost interest in my career. In 2012, I resigned from my job, but continued working on contract. Stepping back into a contractor role allowed me to let go of old emotional baggage and treat the work as a simple business task.

Eventually, in 2014, I threw in the towel. I simply could not do it anymore.

Corné, who had by then started working in Sandton and moved into his own flat, realised that things were going badly wrong at home. His proposed solution to our problem would send all our lives in an entirely new direction.

Featured image: Karen and Genis with Grandma in the gardens of the care facility.