Rooms with memories....

TEN years ago we moved to this house with Okaasan...and really started life together. In a big old house in the Sapporo suburbs. We basically lived upstairs and she had two big rooms downstairs.

The picture at the top of this blog was taken that day. Okaasan and me, sitting on the sofa in her newly arranged room, which we had set up with a big TV, a heated table, clothes hanging place, futons etc etc

She never really used both rooms. The tatami room became a clothes - and SO much more - store...bags...bags...bags...old bits of food...shoes....Hawaiian dance stuff....knickknacks...

She lived in the main room - slept/ate/had toilet accidents/watched hours of TV/fiddled around with magazines and newspapers....SO much of what's happened to us happened in that room. Laughs and anger. Cross-cultural warzone.

And then...finally...life for Okaasan here became too hard. The fall...the broken bone...the incapacity..the raging fury....the hospitals and care homes...it became clear she would never come back. In fact we don't risk even a visit here, in case it sparks off confusion about where "home" is. She proudly and happily now calls her 10th floor room and the care home her "home".

Since then it's taken me two years to clear out the rooms here at our home - get rid of stuff/keep essentials. We've used the rooms for guests and drying laundry. The cats have moved in, with great joy, to the old carpet in front of the heater. In our conversation the room has changed from "Okaasan's room", to "Chichi's room" and "the downstairs room"....

And now. A new era is born.

 

Yes, there is the old sofa....the very cleaned floor (we all know what happened on THAT floor!)...the blue curtains. Cat.

It's about to become an English classroom. Somehow. By next week....

I decided to make some big changes in my work life: close the rented apartment which I've used for over 11 years and move the lessons to home. Rearrange some other teaching too and try to free up more time for tour guide work. That's the grand plan.

The past few weeks have been a stressed time of trying to make those changes. A lot of goodbyes to students. Changes which will be good, I hope. But at the moment, just feel like stress.

So. this room with all its memories....about to make some new memories. :-)

* We went and saw Okaasan yesterday. Took her out in the car to a shopping mall and had a wheelchair walk and coffee. She IS much more confused about doing simple physical things now, getting in and out of the car, the toilet etc And as we sat in a Hawaiian themed cafe we asked her if she'd been to Hawaii...

She said she'd never been. Had no memories of that...no memories of much to do with Hawaii....so sad....I listened to that story a million times...and now it is MY memory. Not hers.

:-(

Out with the old...in with...???

Okaasan's care home service provider changes.
What a Balls Up.

Another big meeting yesterday.
Looks like the new company hoped to take over the contract and use the existing staff. But the staff are loyal to the old company, because it rescued them from a previous company that went bankrupt...

Some families (like us) have signed with the new company.
Some families have stayed with the old company.
The Old company hopes to open another home, elsewhere in the city - and some families plan to move their elderly to that.
And information about the elderly residents can't be shared between the staff of the different companies - for privacy legal reasons.

And from April 1st there will be staff from TWO different care companies operating on the same floor!! But the old company staff won't be allowed to stand behind the nurse station counter or use those call machines etc, using a telephone system instead.

Yes. That's right.

30 elderly residents on the same floor, using the same shared lounge, toilets etc - will be under the daily care of different company staff....
Can't fathom how THAT will work.
If an old person falls in the toilet and the staff from the "other" company come running, will they actually step away and NOT help?

There were no clear answers at the meeting yesterday. 

While Dear Son enjoyed all of that, I actually did the Okaasan visit.
Bundled her up in her coat and took her for a wheelchair trip round the local streets, to the cafe in the convenience store for a drink.
She is pretty passive now. Happy in a way. But just looks around at life.
NO interest at all in buying a women's magazine - so strange that she used to live to buy and read these magazines just a few years ago. Now, no interest.
We stopped to look in an antique shop window and the friendly owner came out for a chat...Okaasan told him she had been born in Tokyo....a lady who has always felt GREAT pride in her Kawagoe birthplace. Definitely NOT Tokyo. I was surprised...
Such familiar things are falling away from her? Magazines? Birthplace?

Back in the care home I left her with a cup of coffee in front of the TV and joined the families for the Balls Up Meeting.

What a mess.

I just hope that Japanese people being so Japanese - the actual day to day care on the 10th and 11th floors will go well - because they staff of the two different companies will cooperate with eachother. 
But it's a strange situation