Wheels in motion?

Sunday morning I walked in on my dear man surfing the Internet....for care homes.

He was scrolling thru pages of bedroom plans and categories, pictures of smiley female staff holding tea cups with happy-looking old people.

Gosh. Senior models in Japan must be having a boom at the moment posing for all this stock footage of elderly in care homes....

So.

He is looking. Tomorrow morning the social worker will come to meet us here at home and we will discuss what happens next.

Is a big home better than a small one?
Private room is best?
How will her toilet situation - unable to get there unaided...how will that work?
Can we get one close to home?
Does it matter if there is a garden or not?
Will all the other residents be completely out of it and vegetating in wheelchairs?

A whole new thing is opening up for us.

And on Friday last week Dear Son went to the family court to attend a lecture about how to apply for control over an elderly person's finances etc....so he is trying to put all of that in motion too.

I feel guardedly elated.
I can see a winter of freedom opening up for me. No more rushing home from work to get a dinner together near 7 pm and on the table. No sitting, eating and trying to be lively and friendly for little response...after a day of work where I try to be lively and friendly with endless, endless people....

Instead I can come home. Eat something on a tray in front of the TV. Relax. DS will be away ski teaching for weeks on end...my winter life will be work, cats, snow clearing....MY life. I can have guests to stay....invite friends for dinner...
And of course I will go to a care home and visit Okaasan a couple of times a week. Be lively and friendly for an hour...then get in the car and come away.

That freedom. It's in sight.

But....but....even when we went to the hospital on Saturday and watched Okaasan's physical training. I still felt nervous - almost expecting her to miraculously  start skipping across the room, lifting her knees and pirouetting to show us her sudden-found-mobility.
Dear Son would look stunned and happy: She is better! She can come home right now! 

She didn't. He didn't. Relief.

She got in and out of the chair and walked between two bars at waist level. Gripping onto the bars with power, with the trainer gripping onto Okaasan's waistband. She walked 3 m and sat down. After a rest she walked..slowly another 3 m. And sat down. It was about the level of her ability in early August, before the 10 days of fever and knee pain.

Certainly not good enough to be home and alone, making trips to the toilet alone. Trips to the kitchen. Thankfully.

I have twinges of guilt about feeling that.....wishing her NOT to get strong enough to walk.
I don't want her home again.
There. I said it.....