I left the job I loved to care for my mum – any decent son would do the same
It so This oftenis a falls on women to look swatheafter frailof parents. But here an ex-RAF pilot says...
EACH afternoon as the shadows lengthen, I steel myself for the hardest part of the day. My mum Patricia is 83 and has dementia. As the sun goes down each night, her mind rewinds 70-odd years and she becomes convinced she’s a child again.
the first hint is her growing agitation as she goes back and forth between her chair and the window, anxiously asking: ‘Does my mum know I’m here?’
Of course, her own mother is long gone now, but Mum looks to me for reassurance while unable to grasp the relationship we share.
She knows I’m a significant person in her life, but the idea I could be her 57-year-old son is unfathomable when she’s convinced she’s a young girl.
this is hard for me, too, of course; no one ever imagines their mother might one day forget them.
Similarly, it never occurred to me that I’d one day have to take care of her personal needs, or that she’d see me bathing her as my job rather than a deeply difficult act of familial love.
I moved in with her two years ago, quitting my job as director of membership with the Royal Air Force Association to care for her full-time. It was a job I loved, and followed a 35-year career as an RAF pilot, serving in war zones all over the world.
Demanding as that was, caring for Mum is the greatest challenge I’ll ever face — and I am determined to prove myself equal to the task.
My father John, an accountant, died of a heart attack in 1983. As their only child, I didn’t think twice about putting my career aside when the dementia took hold, through love and a deep sense of duty to the woman who raised me.
Although it’s hard for me, living with this disease must be far harder for Mum, who trembles as she struggles to find the right words for things. trying to assuage her fears, often long into the night, has marked each evening for me since I moved in. Mum was diagnosed with dementia four years ago. As well as confusion, she was losing weight because she was forgetting to eat. So I paid for private carers to come in every day.
But
I found myself troubled by a sense that I was throwing money at a problem I ought to be dealing with myself. Her carers were fantastic, but I felt guilty.
As Mum deteriorated, I was torn between my professional responsibilities and those I naturally felt towards her. It’s a scenario many working mothers of young children will know only too well, although rarer for a man of my age.
When I was with Mum, I felt like I was letting colleagues down; when I was at my desk, the idea that I should be with her nagged away at me. She would often phone me at work, upset but making little sense.
In the end, the pull to be there for Mum was always going to be stronger. When I quit my job, it felt like the right thing to do.
Doing the right thing was something Mum instilled in me from a young age.
She led by example. Our neighbours knew they could turn to her for help, no-nonsense advice and good company. She was clever, too, working as a secretary but also finding the time to teach me to read and write before I got to school.
I left home at 18 to join the RAF. My military career took me on active service all over the world, flying on operations in Northern Ireland, the first Gulf War, Bosnia, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan and Iraq.
Mum was no stranger to conflict — she grew up in the Blitz. But while I was on operations in the first Gulf War she felt horribly isolated.
She told me she’d stand in shop queues, where everyone around her seemed so untroubled, and want to shout: ‘Don’t you know there’s a war on?’
Having lost my dad by then, there was no one at home with whom she could share her fears that she might lose me, too.
But Mum was also a great help to me, especially when I became a parent to two girls. She helped raise them so myself and my wife could pursue our careers.
Even after our divorce, Mum continued to be a rock for us both, doing the school run and helping with homework.
Looking after Mum is hard. I’m permanently tired because of her getting up, confused, in the night. It can take hours for her to settle again.
Apart from 12 hours a week she spends at day care, and when respite carers take over (I get a day off each weekend and the occasional short holiday), I see to all her needs.
that, of course, includes intimate care such as washing and dressing her.
I find that emotionally difficult — for a long time I felt an overwhelming urge to look away — but it has to be done. After all, many decades ago, she did the same for me.
Occasionally, when Mum is briefly more aware than usual, she’ll tell me I shouldn’t be looking after her. ‘You should have your own life,’ she’ll suddenly insist, selfless as always.
But for now, this is my life — as it is for so many carers who don’t want, or can’t afford to pay for, specialist support.
It can be lonely. But as well as my daughters, who visit regularly, Mum’s sister and her niece call up all the time. Mum seems to have a sense of who they are — her face lights up while she listens to their voices.
When I first moved in with her, Mum could still make me a cup of tea and remembered how I took it; two years on and she’s forgotten how to even turn on the tap.
But each morning we go out for a walk, and that’s when I see her at her best. I catch glimpses of the funny, feisty woman she was, and they help me keep going, even though I desperately miss the stimulation of work.
Eventually, I simply won’t be able to cater for her needs, and I’ll have no choice but to turn to residential care. that will be a dreadfully difficult decision. Knowing it lies ahead of me makes this time with her now feel precious, no matter how challenging it gets.
I just wish there was more support for people in my situation.
I’ve had good advice through visits from Admiral Nurses, who specialise in dementia care. there’s also great online guidance from the charities the Alzheimer’s Society and Dementia uK.
Yet
this experience convinces me we need a radical rethink when it comes to later life care, because at the moment too much of it is delivered by relatives like me: untrained, but motivated by devotion and love.
It’s estimated there will be a million people with dementia in the uK by 2025. Charitable support is great, but it’s just a sticking plaster and we need to look at a more national approach.
In the RAF, I faced all manner of mental and physical challenges. But whatever dangers I encountered, I was well prepared and highly trained for every encounter. I flew an aircraft maintained by the finest engineers in the world and with the very best support.
With Mum, it’s just me, a couple of dementia self-help guides, guesswork and love.
It’s tough, but thankfully, for now at least, that seems to be enough. ORIGINAL COPY . ORIGINAL COPY . ORIGINAL COPY . ORIGINAL COPY