Hello everyone ,
today was an interesting day for me as my father is staying at Rose Lodge in Wonthaggi which is a retirement lodge for elderly people ,
people are in there for various reasons and my dad is there to give my mum some much needed respite , as she is his carer
and I admit that l was a bit apprehensive when I pulled into the car park ,
There’s someone on the door to greet you with the news that you have to have a covid test ,
I was like a fish out of water and told the man that I have never done one before , he said wow really but he helped me do the test , for those of you like me that have never had a test , you have to swab a cotton bud up both of your nostrils then they put it in a container and shake it and then drip it onto a test pad that looks like a pregnancy test ,
Then you sit down for fifteen minutes to await your results
Of course I was negative so I have to done a mask and head in to the building ,
It’s a bit like a hospital with staff and patients moving around the place
One floor down and a short walk to dad’s room .
There he was sitting quietly in the chair in the dark ,
I felt instantly sorry for him as to me this once great man has been reduced to a feeble and frail old man .
Where did all the years go?
We can’t go backwards now ,
My dad is legally blind and deaf and can’t look after himself ,
So I was clutching at straws looking for something for him to do,so
I asked him if he still had that book reading radio that he used to have?
He answered that I sent it back because it put me to sleep and it was too expensive to rent it ,
All that I could do then was to try and think of something else for him to do , but then he distracted me and he asked me to take some things home for him ,
I wasn’t exactly sure what it would be , and he opened the drawer and got out a hand towel , he then did something that really surprised me and he took five medicine containers off the top of the table and he wrapped them up in the towel,
I said to him are you pinching them dad? , my father has never stolen anything in his life , he laughed and said that they all go in the bin . It made me grin that funny quirky little incident.
So then I talked about meal times and did he look forward to them , he gave a resounding yes and he said that the meals were different.
And apparently he happily announced to me that he is going on an outing tomorrow to the park across the road .
That’s his only thing he has to look forward to and an outing next Tuesday by the planned activity group for the men’s group,
I asked him if he knew other people in there he said yes but he hasn’t run into anybody yet as you have to sit at the same place and with the same people at the table for meals .
Then it was time for me to go and we said goodbye and he assured me that he was ok in there , but it made me feel that he was just like a prisoner doing time counting and waiting for every second to pass until meal time , and there’s always sleep ,
But I guess the truth of the matter is that with every second counted he gets older and so do we all
So it’s the old cliche and I guess we all have to make the most of our life spending time doing what makes us happy as before to long ,we are the mums and dads that are sitting in Rose Lodge just wondering where our life went and we are the ones counting the seconds as they tick by
Cheers