Interrupted

I have never responded well to interrupted sleep, and when my mother knocked on my bedroom door at God knows what time this morning, I told her that it was too early and she should go back to bed. She meekly withdrew, which is not like her - she's usually infuriating in her persistence. My mother is ninety-four years old and has endowed us all with a streak of her cussedness. She came to live with me nine years ago; a situation that in retrospect I didn't think through properly. This is nothing new for me. My elder son has remarked: 'You do get yourself in some pickles'.

Mum has devoted her life to home-making and looking after other people: first my grandmother; then my brother and finally my father up to the time he died eighteen years ago. By 'looking after' I mean care over and above the care she obviously gave everyone, including me when I was growing up; care bordering on nursing. My brother's asthma and eczema, however, miraculously all but disappeared after he finally left home and married. I know that he considers that he has done his duty by telling me that it's not, like the proverbial dog, just for Christmas. Mum, who used to always have a roast dinner waiting for us when we went to stay with her, hasn't cooked since she moved here. She used to dust, iron, wash the dishes and walk to the local newsagent each day for a paper but one by one these activities have fallen off. The last to go was the dishes, which I have to confess was a relief, because I had to do them again on account of her poor eyesight. I now realise that my once capable mother, had enough of a sense of preservation to know that she was becoming incapable of looking after herself although she'd never admit it, least of all to me.

Since the age of eighty-five Mum has suffered from short term memory loss, which has accelerated over the last twelve months: from confusion as to what day it is she now has trouble knowing what part of the day it is or whether it's day or night, which takes me back to where I came in. After my sleep had been so rudely disturbed, I slept fitfully, aware that the landing light was on but too lazy to get out of bed and switch it off. When I finally got up at a reasonable hour, I found that every light in the house was on including the one in my mother's bedroom where she now lay sleeping. I went down for my breakfast, feeling consoled by the fact that, despite rising energy prices the Government gives £300, just before Christmas each year to people of her age, in order to help with fuel bills and ensure that they keep warm. I ate a leisurely breakfast and then read several poems as part of my project to increase my productivity. It was then time to get my mother up.

Of course I felt guilty when I found that she had not only wet the bed, having removed the pad I'd put on her the previous night, but had suffered a fall.

'I went down', she said.

There was blood on her duvet which had come from from her leg, where the paper thin skin had been rolled back to reveal a raw looking gash. It turned out to be less alarming than I had feared, although she was very confused, and I soon had her dressed and downstairs drinking a cup of tea; something she is always ready to do despite my insistence that wants goes in has to come out. Mercifully, I had one dressing left from the last time she knocked her leg. What i haven't mentioned yet, is that my mother is also losing her grip on reality as she slips more and more into dementia. She talks about 'them' and says that 'they' come into her room and take things and one night refused to go to bed because she was waiting for 'the lad to come in'.

This week's prompt for Writers Island is "Fork in the Road" in which we're invited to think about a critical decision we've made or might be about to make. I've shied away writing about my Mum on numerous occasions but the time has come to face up to the dilemma as to what i am to do about her. I live on the edge of the New Forest, a couple of miles from the sea. This is an area where people come to retire and the medical and social services are stretched to breaking point. If I'm lucky I get a couple of week's respite every three months or so. Unlike my mother, I don't have a vocation as a nurse. I also have arthritis in my hands which caused me to drop the shampoo bottle twice last time I washed Mum's hair. I'm a retired maths teacher who likes writing poetry and taking courses with the Open University. I'm currently studying French as my elder son lives in the French speaking part of Switzerland, close to the border, and I have considered moving to France. At the end of this week, i'm starting a course on postcolonial literature as a possible warm up exercise to doing the MA I've been considering for the last twenty or so years. There are many people in this area who live to over ninety and I'm not the only one to be in this position. Nobody is going to help me and the time has come for me to seek a solution to my dilemma. My mother may have looked after her mother who herself looked after my great-grandmother but I know that I can't do it much longer despite the entreaties not to 'put me in one of those places'.