Agony of not being able to hug my beloved mum
Thirty-minute slots in a freezing garden. Forced to sit far apart. After months banned from her mother’s dementia care home, SAM PARTINGTON describes a heartbreaking reunion that will strike a chord with so many others...
FORCING myself to swallow my tears, I wait in the care home garden for my mum. After six months apart and a four-hour train journey from London, I don’t want to waste my half-hour visit crying.
When she appears in her wheelchair on the other side of the door and sees me, she points and looks up to the carer, who nods — yes, that’s Sam, your daughter.
The last time we were together was in February and seeing her now makes me catch my breath. Her auburn hair is whiter than I’ve ever seen it before, making her look older than her 70 years. And her shoulder-length bob, uncut for months, is tied back in a braid that hangs down her back.
My mum, Maureen, has advanced dementia and lives in a care home in my home town of Wrexham, North Wales.
Her illness started cruelly early. She was 57 when dementia began, brought on by a brain tumour she’d had diagnosed 12 years earlier, when I was 17. Both Mum and my father Phil, a supervisor at a production plant, tried to shield my older brother Michael, now 43, and me from the worst of it.
But years later, she began forgetting words and struggling with balance. She had to leave her job at a charity aged 53 because she was struggling to use the computer, and by the time she was 60 her speech was jumbled, her questions repetitive.
At night Mum couldn’t sleep and wandered around the house, moving things. My dad had emphysema and struggled to climb stairs so he couldn’t easily check she was safe.
Meanwhile, I had moved to London to train as a journalist. The companies I worked for were supportive but it was a stressful time.
Those years were awful, yet Mum and I often found ourselves laughing. Getting soaked trying to pull her out of the bath when she had forgotten how to stand up, or rolling around together on her bed, wrestling her into a pair of tights, would suddenly make us burst into giggles.
In early 2016, a nasty infection landed her in hospital for a few days.
‘She has dementia,’ one of the nurses told us. ‘How is she being cared for at home?’
To HeAr the word ‘dementia’ was a shock. She had visited the GP often for her forgetfulness but we’d always been told it was a consequence of the tumour. It made us see we couldn’t keep her safe any more.
When she moved into the care home — Hillbury House, in Wrexham — in May 2016, aged just 66, she couldn’t remember how to walk.
In those first months, I tried desperately to convince myself, and Dad, that nothing had changed. But he died of a heart attack less than five months after she moved in.
At first I made plenty of mistakes in my efforts to maintain a ‘normal’ relationship with Mum. I insisted she had to go to my brother’s son’s 18th, for example, but the noise and low lights made her feel uncomfortable. In the end, she covered her face with her scarf and I took her home. But we’ve had successes, too. Last summer, I left my job as a personal finance reporter for this paper to spend more time with Mum. I stayed in London because I had nowhere to live in Wrexham — my brother and I sold the family house to pay for Mum’s care — but to be close to her, I bought a sofa for her room in the care home, and a TV and DVD player, consciously recreating our old lounge in her bedroom.
Pre-Covid, the carers would hoist Mum onto the sofa so we could sit side by side. I’d shut her bedroom door, kick off my shoes, curl up on her and put her arm around me.
If I spoke in the same tone of voice I’ve always used and asked questions in familiar language, sometimes she answered instinctively. Then, I would feel we’d tricked the dementia.
After she met my partner, Spencer, for the first time in 2017, I asked: ‘What do you think, Mum?’ There was a pause. ‘Handsome,’ she said.
once I said: ‘What do I look like in this dress, Mum?’ No pause this time. ‘Fat.’ You’ve got to love mums.
In February, when I visited last, I was so happy. I had the freedom from work to visit more often and our bond was stronger than ever.
I had plans for the summer: Prosecco in the gardens with her, and a cinema trip to a ‘dementiafriendly’ showing.
But for now those moments are gone and I’m scared how much damage it will do to our relationship.
on this first visit after such a long gap, we are allowed to have lunch together outside. The home has a strict ban on anyone but staff entering the building.
In theory, we are allowed only a half-hour visit and I worry it won’t be enough time for Mum and I to revive our bond. Normally it takes her about an hour to warm up to me or even recognise me fully.
We sit either side of a wide table, waiting for the food to appear, and at first it seems my fears are justified. Mum, wrapped in a blanket, doesn’t seem that bothered to see me. Before the pandemic I visited monthly and spent days at a time at the home.
During lockdown, I was frightened she’d think I had abandoned her or, worse, that she would forget she had a daughter. And now I’m finally allowed to see her, in the 30-minute slot there won’t be time to make any kind of emotional reconnection.
It is a scene repeated in care homes up and down the country — snatched visits with confused, distressed residents who often fail to understand the reason for their relatives’ apparent desertion.
This isn’t the fault of individual care
homes, which are only following government guidelines. But perhaps these rules, so lacking when it mattered at the height of the first wave, have now swung too far in the opposite direction.
My mum needs to be safe but my love for her also plays a hugely powerful role in the management of her disease.
It’s hard to tell how much Mum understands Covid rules. She rarely talks any more. Usually we’d watch TV together, holding hands. Of course, now I am not allowed to hold her hand and I can feel a widening gulf between us.
Her carers, however, always amaze me with their kindness. I was only expecting a few sandwiches but instead they treat me and Mum to an afternoon tea — three tiers of cakes and finger sandwiches and a lovely pot of tea.
The food is a welcome distraction. Without our cuddles, I fall back into my old habit of trying too hard to get a response from her. It reminds me of how I used to be when Mum first moved into the care home four years ago.
Back then, I was desperate to prove life could go on. At my peak of mad overcompensating behaviour, I soaked her feet in a bowl of soapy water while trying to feed her favourite Chinese food.
In the end, by accident and sheer exhaustion, I realised I’d been going at it all wrong: the less there is going on around Mum, the more focused she is on the two of us.
And if I fuss too much, I miss her blinks. ‘I l ove you too,’ she’s saying when she closes her eyes for a bit longer than a blink.
Sometimes, when she was less alert, I would stand behind her chair and she would let me brush her hair — another way she showed me her love.
This time, our half hour comes and goes in a flash and other families start to take their places at the tables, waiting for their loved ones. It’s freezing and napkins are blowing all over the place. But, bless them, the carers don’t ask me to leave yet.
Finally, Mum tries to talk a little but her words come out jumbled and she closes her eyes in frustration. I can’t help reaching over and putting my hand on hers to let her know it’s OK.
It feels so good to touch her skin and she instinctively wraps her fingers around mine for a second. Her smile is filled with love and, although I’m crying a bit, it makes me relax. She knows it’s me.
I am so grateful for this visit, especially since other means of contact no longer work for us.
Even before Covid-19, I’d stopped ringing her in between visits. Mum wouldn’t say anything and those calls always ended with me crying into the silence.
But when visits were cancelled in March, suddenly the phone was all we had. I switched to video calls because I thought seeing my face might prompt her to be more alert, but it was hit-and-miss — and sometimes it was heartwrenchingly awful. I’d manage ten minutes of watching her gaze drift around the room, then return to the screen with a blank stare.
She turned 70 during lockdown but we had to settle for a video of her receiving a cake while her carers sang Happy Birthday.
Like thousands of families, we have missed out on so much. Yet we are the lucky ones. While Covid has swept through many care homes, in my Mum’s home there has been just one non-fatal case.
In the end, I get to stay for two hours. While I’m there, a band arrives to play for the residents and I watch as Mum sips a glass of wine and taps her foot to the music. I can tell she’s happy. Then she glances sideways and gives me such a warm smile — and one of her winks. I feel a glimmer of hope. I’m sure of it — one day soon, we’ll be curled up on her sofa together, holding hands again.