Walking. Together.

So. New normal.

I took Okaasan for a walk.

She needed a little persuading to go out, but I reassured her that I knew which roads were icy and so she got herself together and we set out together on Sunday afternoon for a stroll round the local streets.

Awful balance problems. She seems to teeter along - like she is on tip toe all the time - almost ready to go off balance and into trouble. Her whole body appears to be forward all the time.

I grasped her hand and guided her firmly up the street and to the main road.

We walked/teetered. She grabbed onto walls and street lights, shop windows and signs. Kept stopping and looking up and down the street.

"Are you tired? Shall we take a break?"

"No, not a break. I am just looking and thinking where to go. ...."

Constantly.

And often really holding onto something, like a street pole, with both arms. Looked very odd.

But we walled. And stopped. And sat on walls and benches. 

No way could she walk to the Seiyu supermarket where she always used to go and I was wondering what to do when we got to the crossroads. We could come back by taxi, but I doubted she had the energy to GET there in the first place. 
At the corner she hesitated. Looked around. I made vague comments about the Japanese sweets shop and a cup of coffee in the other direction....and after a few minutes she came with me...almost willingly.

At the sweets shop almost fell INTO a basket of sweets on a rickety table outside the shop. Then bought some rice cakes. Back to the station, into the convenience store, toilet, magazine and finally.....agreed to let me lead her home.

Obviously exhausted.

She enjoyed telling me "this is what I always do, sit here, buy my magazine here, go to the toilet here, walk here"...and I let her instruct me. But I managed to make it a short enough walk an get her home again.

But. shocked really.

She used to walk so far alone, miles actually. For hours. Not now.

The old lady at Table 4...

Bet every cafe/restaurant has one: the old person who comes in and orders one coffee. And sits there for ages, glancing at a newspaper and looking around. Just being. Taking up the table space, but not showing any signs of moving soon.
Waiters probably hover at the kitchen door, wondering how to shift the long stay - one coffee customer.

Okaasan has found two new places to go and have a coffee at.
Recently she isn't so strong at all on walking. She staggers along, touching the walls or parked cars, or shop signs. So her walking is often closer to home. The Seicomart coffee counter or MacDonald's are increasingly too far.
Last week we found her (GPS) in the little curry restaurant 100 meters from home. At 7.20 pm. She'd left the house about 6 pm, so she'd been there for an hour with one coffee. Wasn't really aware that it was after 7 pm and that family dinner might be waiting....
It isn't a popular restaurant, so there was no pressure for tables - but I guess the guy maybe wanted to shut up shop and call it a night. He looked very relieved when we appeared to take Okaasan home.
Next night ( probably because we'd chatted about it), Okaasan had coffee in the far more popular curry restaurant about 200 m from home. But she didn't stay long. It's always got a line of customers and I expect the waiters are good at moving the tables along.

There's been a lot in the Japanese media recently about dementia sufferers wandering from home and getting lost or causing accidents with trains and trucks. One poor woman was missing for SEVEN years, before she was featured in an NHK program about dementia and someone recognised her!!!! 
I feel a little reassured that we live in a friendly, safe area where Okaasan can wander and not get into trouble...maybe. People are kind. If it takes a village to raise a child...it certainly takes a village to look out for the elderly.

We cared for Okaasan on Saturday with a day out family style. Went to a fishing lake with tickets for a cheap curry lunch.

The walk in thru the ponds was uneven ground, but with DS's help Okaasan managed it. Lunch took some time coming to the table, but Okaasan happily looked at the fishing groups and told us about her father and fishing, and why river fish is inferior to sea fish etc.
She looks at menus many times in restaurants, maybe not sure if we've ordered yet or not - and commenting on the foods.

Dear Son and Okaasan...hand in hand ;-))

This week hasn't got off to a good start.

Okaasan went walking Sunday - maybe a long stagger down to the MacDonald's.

DS and I were both out when she came home, so she ate the dinner I'd left out for her on the table.

Monday morning she was in agony with a pain in her right rib area.

"This isn't my stomach, is it? But I shouldn't eat anything..."

She's been on the carpet now for two days - getting up to get to the bathroom and get yogurts from the fridge...

We don't know what happened. Did she fall on Sunday? Something else? There is no cut or bruise on her skin. We don't know. But it's only 2 days....wait and see ...wait and see.

Downtown a deux

Did a whole trip-downtown-for-walk-and-lunch with Okaasan today.
More than 3 hours of it.
I am patting myself on the back. Well, I would if my Belgian chocolate expanded waistline would let me stretch that far.

All went well.
She enjoyed it. I managed it. No murders took place.
No actual shopping either :-) Which is a miracle.

I felt I should give up some block of my winter holiday time to Okaasan. Amid my skiiing, meeting up with friends, watching old Friends episodes, going to a strangely non-sexual performance of Phantom of the Opera...and chocolates.
So at 11 am I packed her up in the car in clothes suitable for the season and drove downtown.
Parked at the southside of the city area and walked her up to the center along one of the underground shopping streets that criss-cross Sapporo.
Everywhere was busy with winter sales and shoppers loaded with bulging bags. Okaasan told me about every 20 m that buying stuff in the sales was a bad idea because it was the pre-Christmas unsold items. But she really enjoyed the noise and the bustle and the stuff on display.

As we drove into town I'd mentioned road heating and how some parts of the pavement are not snow covered in the city center.
But as we walked the 5 city blocks of this underground mall Okaasan kept telling me that it was better to walk on the brown tiles at the side...not the white tiles in the center of the mall.
Why?
Cos this area was roadheating and not slippery!
I pointed out several times to her that this was an underground mall and there was no snow - hence no need for roadheating. But she kept saying it....and sticking to the brown tiles....

She sat down several times to rest. Then got her to the Mitsukoshi department store...and finally up stairs to their cafe for lunch.
The chat here was all about how Dear Son had told her that it was a bad department store and going bankrupt....I now remembered he'd told her a variation of this when she first came to live in Sapporo - because he didn't want her to get a store charge card. She has SO absorbed that story that she told me various times in loud whispers: "the staff here don't know, but people in Tokyo know that it's got financial problems and might close soon!"

After lunch she wandered the sales floors a little, peering at stuff - but very, very luckily not wanting to buy.
Then wanted to go to the other department store...
But I could see she was getting tired.
I managed to change the second store plans into coffee...and then change that into coffee at a convenience store near the station.

As Okaasan got tireder her conversation slipped off the rails into odd sidetracks....buying a magazine, and then on the way out of the shop going back to the magazine rack:"Oh look, they have magazines!" and leaving one coffee drinking stop and saying brightly:"shall we go and have coffee" two steps outside the door...

Sometime after 2 pm I got her up to street level and into a taxi and back to the car park, and home.

Success. ;-)

A big reason I used to dread doing this kind of outing with her was a big lack of confidence in my Japanese ability. Left alone with her, could I chat away for a few hours? Well - I can - cos of course I can say the same things! Aimless chat is ok. Weather, things we see etc. She tells the same stories and comments. And so it flows.
I also used to be scared that she'd have an accident while in my care. I still worry about that. Specially in winter. Her balance isn't good...and she perches on sitting places unsteadily. She almost fell headfirst out of the taxi. Heart stopping moment that: I dropped my handbag and car keys in the road and hoisted her upright.

She walked well today. I don't know - but suspect - what happened about toilet needs. I kept pointing out toilets, and she kept saying she didn't need one...

But she seemed to enjoy the trip and trust me. Took my hand on the snowy places. Gave me advice about winter sales, bad department stores and food that was packaged to look good...

One more day and Dear Son is home.
One more day.

Weekend of changed plans...

 
Hmmm....if Japan allowed foreigners to vote if you've lived here 20 years and paid taxes to support the country - this is the bunch of people I could have chosen from today.

Hmmm....spoiled for choice really. An alien in a suit doing a fairly good job of being humanoid, three men in suits with glasses and a woman who likes pink.

Today I reached new heights of Oyomesan duty by taking Okaasan to exercise her democratic right and vote at the local elementray school.
In the mornng she and I agreed that it was snowy and not a good idea to go. By lunchtime the sunshine was out and she was chomping at the bit - incongrously recently, she puts on her hat and T-shirt, and is still wearing her pajama bottoms in the kitchen. It's quite a sight.

I was home for the day. Another snow storm this morning. Had to put off the sking...again. A little disappointed, but actually - time at home was good too after last week.

So I cleared snow all morning. And celebrated by crafting a snow monster cat in the garden.
 At night he'll have a candle in his big mouth...his eyebrows are dried lavender. Maybe at night he'll sneak round the corner to the neighbor's monster.

 

Cooked lunch for Okaasan and ate it with her. She was actually pretty lucid and we chatted about food and names and her husband who never cooked.

After lunch, we wrapped up and set out together to the voting station. Only 10 mins walk from the house, but took us about 25 mins. Okaasan VERY slow and cautious, shuffling along. I took her hand and guided her. Her eyesight is good, but she said that she can't make out the snow surface and its bumps.

"Yujiro will be angry if I fall down and break something" she said several times.

I was thinking: "he'll be angry with ME too, if you fall down and break something, on my watch".

 

Not allowed to photograph IN the hall...cos???

Finally got to the school. I gave Okaasan her voting card ftom the safety of my handbag and watched her shuffle off across the school gym hall to tables, desks, boxes and cubby holes.  Okaasan took ages. In Japan you have to write the name of the candidate yourself, I wondered if she knew who it was....


Helpful cartoons about the voting process.

After voting, I'd hoped to take Okaasan to the supermarket and maybe put her on a subway downtown. Or take her home.
She had different ideas. Plans to go to Macdonalds and drink coffee.
I actually had shopping and cooking to do for the local teachers' association xmas pot luck party, so I sent her off alone with repeated instructions to come home by taxi. The pavements on the main roads are okayish, the side roads a nightmare...but of course going by bus from your doorstep to a nice big day service center once a week to exercise inside somehow doesn't seem like a good idea.....

"I can walk on snowy streets, and I WILL!"

I rushed home to cook. Washed and ironed some of Okaasan's shirts and added to her clothes rail two more long sleeved pink shirts I bought for her recently. She has very few long-sleeved shirts. Her response recently to me cutting out the ripped lining of her fave old cardigan (she thinks she did it herself) had given me the courage to intervene more about adding new, essential clothes to her rail.
Recently I've added black trousers, and now two shirts - the trousers she just wears and never commented on where they came from. I'm hoping the shirts too.
Going shopping with Okaasan is a HUGE hassle, because she chooses what she likes...not what she needs in cold snowy Sapporo. If I can stealth shop for her it'll be easier.

Using the GPS I kept an eye on her. I could see when she left Macdonalds and tried to walk up the main street home.
Luckily the Friend coming to the teachers' party with me lives nearby, so we managed to cordinate her coming to me in a taxi with also bringing Okaasan home in a taxi.
Then I left dinner for Okaasan and escaped to this...

YUM! That's what I call a xmas dinner !!!

And so, another weekend. Saturday was ok - I worked in the morning at a seminar for local tourism. Then lunched with some friends, and then home to do student Christmas cards...and clear more snow. And at 6 pm one cat came home flecked with blood from another fight....so had to go to the vets in a taxi...luckily no stitches this time. But he's in a plastic collar AGAIN. Had to cancel my going out to party plans to stay home and check he didn't get stuck in a narrow place...

I've recovered some of my energy from the madness of Friday. I think.
Onwards into another week. One more full week to go...and then a few days...almost holidays...
Dear Son will be home mid-week. It will be good to be two again.
Tomorrow is just an ordinary Monday for Okaasan now. The day service was cancelled. The manager man called Yujiro Friday night. So, I'll just leave Okaasan lunch as usual and let her veg out by the Tv all day.
Seeing her walk on the snowy streets today showed me yet again, she just CAN'T go out walking easily from here. Even on a sunny day with slightly wet snow. It took all her focus to stay upright and safe.

 

 

Walk this way.

I took Okaasan downtown yesterday.
No, I haven't suddenly gone all sweet and helpful. I wasn't planning to spend hours of my precious weekend shopping with her...I just, literally took her downtown (and she chose the "old, dirty" coat to wear :-))

The roads are still icy beneath the first real snowfall and she hasn't been out for 3 days. It's hard to do this in a working week.

Oh, her walking. So frail and doddery. And kind of tilted forwards all the time. She took the stick, but she doesn't really use it effectively. More like holding it in front of her and patting the ground with it. The snow has set in dips and slopes. It was scary watching her walk.
I let her choose the route - because she now avoids the place where she fell last year and walks round the long way on another street.
I let her choose where we waited for the subway train and which exit we used downtown.
Then I said Goodbye and telephoned the friend I was going to meet, and I slightly followed Okaasan as she took far exit from the subway station and then double-backed and headed to her currently-favorite coffee shop.
Watching her walk: sad. A lady who has travelled the world and led an eventful life. Doddering along. Near the coffee shop is an empty lot and the pavement is covered with knarly, ridged snow and ice. She teetered over it slowly.
One day I will be like this. In a city of rushing, busy people. Doddering along to sit alone in a coffee shop, in the hope that a familiar face will come and talk to me. And I don't have children. So there won't even be someone waiting for me at home with a cooked dinner and bright chat.
That's why I am saving money for the best retirement home ever.

I spent a few hours with my friend and her baby down the German-themed Christmas market and the winter illuminations. It was scarily icy in the park. Must wait for a few more snowfalls before we bring Okaasan down here. I'm sure she doesn't go there on her own, she is fixed in her routines: Subway station - coffee shop - department store- underground walking area - subway - home.

After an hour or two I headed home at 6 pm.
I wanted to get home myself to check on the GPS on the computer, so I could see Okaasan heading home and go out and meet her at the local subway station.
Got into the house. Heating. Cats' dinner. Computer On. GPS set.
Computer search.....map pops up on the screen. The little star is....???
Oh! She's almost here already! The street across the subway line. Strange? Wonder why she came home that way?
I put on my coat again and went out to meet her.
Empty street.
Go home. Re-check the computer.
Ok - now she is in our street. Almost home actually.
I look out the window. I go and stand outside. Looking.
Empty street.
??????????????????????????????
Did she drop the phone? Is she buried in a snow drift????
?????????????????????????

Standing there looking up and down the street....brainwave.
The GPS gives approximate readings...correct within 20 meters or so....hmmm....ahhhh....the neighbor's house? She is inside????
I open the neighbor's mailbox and peer into her entrance hall.
Okaasan's boots are inside.

She'd lost the front door key. Again. Came home, loaded down with yet another heavy, glossy magazine, and when she couldn't get inside the house. She went to the neighbor. Two old ladies sat chatting together. Must have been an interesting conversation...the 90 year old neighbor is sliding into dementia too :-)

When she came home we looked for the key. Hopeless really. Never mind needles in haystacks. This is key in a pile of papers/receipts/bags/towels/persimon peelings/purses/bits of cardboard. After 10 minutes of opening and closing the same little bags and purses I gave up and went to cook dinner.
I'll get another key cut. And maybe she'll find the key. Or not.....

Noticing the small changes

Yujiro's home for a few days and he is noticing the changes/decline in Okaasan.
Isn't it always the way? If you are regular, daily contact with someone you don't notice so much. But if you come back into their life after a break, the small things ring clearer.
Kids become young adults...adults become older...

He took Okaasan out for a mother/son walk to a local noodle restaurant and noticed how weak and slow her walking is. She held his hand most of the way and had problems with the snow and ice.
He is worried about her walking, and understands why she seems to be getting more nervous about going out. Spring can't come quick enough for her.

And he has notices that her ability with machines is getting worse because in the past few weeks the house toilet seems to be on Automatic Flush mode several times week.

You know these technological marvels: The Japanese Toilet?
All buttons and writing and icons. Do everything, but make tea.
I'd wondered why it was leaping into flush mode as soon as my bum left the seat, wondered if the cats were playing with a hidden switch. Wondered if the goldfish on the backshelf was entertaining himself.

Yujiro realized, the "Automatic Flush" button...Okaasan has been hitting it, strangely ignoring the much larger "Flush" button above it. Something she has done for almost 2 years without any problem...now she is patchy in her use of it.

We've both noticed that her understanding of the electric cooker, the microwave, the washing machine, the electric kettle sem to be slipping. Not all the time, but enough for us to notice.

Meanwhile, I noticed that some of Okaasan's usual Favorite Conversation Trigger Topics just get no response.
Last night we were talking about  air travel - how far it is to Europe etc from Japan. I tried to give Okaasan an opening into the conversation by mentioning "You went to South Africa didn't you? via Hong Kong? That's a long way!"...and nothing. She just smiled at me and vaguely nodded.
90% of the time that gets her onto her usual South African memory stories. But not this time.


And so.

End of a friendship era: my friend Heather, aka Uni Spagetti on her blog, left Sapporo and returned to the Uk where she will be a science star at Newcastle University.
The last few days in Sapporo she stayed at my classroom. On the last night we went for a quiet few hours at a local hot spring hotel and dinner.
And then it was the dawn journey to the airport, chat about everything-but-what-was-coming...and then final teary hugs and forced cheerfulness.
And she was gone.
I got back into town and it was just like a love affair - all those memories of buildings we'd been in, karaoke bars, shops and bars...

Of course the contact goes on with SKYPE and Facebook and...my gosh...those old fashioned things called "letters". But the day-to-day/weekends contact is gone.
Heather was such a huge support to me in the past 2 years of horrible life events - particularly a lot of the stresses over living with Okaasan. A very sympathetic ear. Are we all so selfish in loving the friends who let us tearfully and angrily dump our problematic life all over them? I guess so.

Another blogger recently wondered whether other foreign women in Japan think of their Japanese friends in the same terms as a fellow-foreigner. I wonder that too. I have Japanese women friends - my old roommates are my closefriends. But our closeness is more to do with the fact that we lived together once, I have rarely found that kind of closeness with a let's go to a movie/dinner/hike - Japanese girlfriend.

This ex-pat life is full of such friendship exits. As fellow-foreigners and Japanese friends with dreams of a wider life leave the country. Lynn - now a mum and photo studio boss in the US; Loretta - now a wife and teacher in Melbourne, Sheryl - now an artist in Vancouver Island; Ikuko - now a mum and translator in the UK; Lisa - now mum and organic wine merchant in the US....and so they go.

And I stay here.

O woe is me!!!!! Anyway, enough of that - MY life, my WHOLE life, is arriving on Sunday in boxes etc from England. Tokyo Port customs people have decided my teddy bears and photo albums pose no threat to Japan and released it all.

Sunday morning...I am clearing the entrance hall in preparation for it all.

Home for the Holidays....

Yup.
About to start my Winter Holidays with Okaasan.

Well, I actually start holidays next Wednesday....with a couple of classes slipping under the tinsel on Dec. 27th - but almost there.

And almost out the door: Yujiro gone ski working in Niseko for 11 days...or more.

So. Okaasan and Oyomesan! LOTS of bonding time!!!!

Yujiro's just gave me Okaasan's Health Insurance card. In case she falls again and injures herself.


She was ok after the fall the other day. SO lucky.
She didn't go out much after that. Stayed home and safe and warm. We put a much brighter bulb in the outside light and hope that will make it safer for her.
Yesterday she did venture into the winter dangerland....finally came home at 7.30 pm. Yujiro went out to meet her and he was shocked to see her walking style: he says she looks like a toddler, kind of running, pitching forward, unable to stop....no wonder she falls and often comes home looking breathless.

Why do old people do this? I've seen it with other people. They are sort of out of control, start going at a trot and it gets faster and faster. I wonder if a stick would help. Whether she would be offended by the even the suggestion...although she sometime uses her umbrella as a stick and I don't think she could cope with a stick and an umbrella...and the various bags she always carries.

Apart from that normal life. Our normal anyway.

*  Okaasan burned the pan I left her lunch curry in - she isn't good at all at judging or controlling the heat. Luckily we bought an electric cooker that switches off automatically if the heat gets too high, or if nothing happens for an hour.
*  Okaasan mysteriously used the towel in the toilet for something...then washed it and left it wet on the bathroom floor...THEN cheerfully told us a few hours later: "Do you know there's no towel in the toilet?" I'm just glad she left it in the bathroom and it didn't fester, soiled in her room.
* I rescued some more underwear from her room - and returned some clean...scattering them at different points so she can come across them everywhere.

And so. Heading into the holidays...with Okaasan.
Actually I am happy to be here. So happy to have nice normal, boring time at home.
A few friends/old students are visiting. I have to help a friend prepare and pack for a move back to the UK, eat a lot, watch TV.....and maybe,...just maybe try my leg on a ski slope?????

I just hope Okaasan doesn't fall again and that she stays fairly level emotionally. If she doesn't go out much her mood can go down. I think I will need to take her out in the car to a shopping mall for lunch or something.