The mind has left the building..

Mine, not hers.


Off to the UK next Tuesday for the loooongest holiday in years and years, seeing lots of wonderful friends, eating carrot cake every day and going to what's it called - the big sports, event thingy they have over there in London. You know, what's it called?

All ready to do TWO country supporting at the Olympics!

So, my brain has really left already and is impatiently waiting at the departure gate at Haneda Airport, getting stressed in case body arrives too late. The body is still going through the motions back in Sapporo.


Okaasan is fine, usual life.In fact, even surprised us a few times by DOING things like washing up plates in the kitchen in the morning, and wrapping up newspapers nicely for recycling.
Not sure if she has understood I will be away soon, certainly I've told her a few times...but there was no particular interested response, so maybe no.
I did have plans to try and get her to the hair salon before I go, but MY chaotic life and its needs take precedence. So, she'll go hairy for a few more weeks, because I doubt darling son will notice - unless he falls over her tresses on the floor.


She is in paper cutting/tearing mode.
Sits in her room cutting up the back of supermarket flyers into little notepad-size useful pieces and wrapping up newspaper into balls to stuff in an array of little bags she has on the carpet. Like, 10 bags maybe? The kind of little bags every Japanese woman seems to have, useful little bags for stuff.


Anyway, I will be gone till mid-August. I don't know yet about my Internet connection while in the UK, so this may be a last posting for a while.
At the end of my trip I am going to stay 3 days at Dad and Jane's village, staying with their friends and making sad walks through the woods and fields near the house where they lived for years. So many memories. It'll be hard. Somebody else lives in the house now, and there is still the garden and the tree where I scattered Dad's ashes 3 years ago, and Jane's ashes 2 years ago.
Living here in Japan, all of that seems so distant. I probably conveniently push aside some of the grieving, I expect the trip back will release it all messily.


Anyway, unless Okaasan barks at the neighbors or cooks me a 5 course farewell dinner I probably won't post here for a while.


Over and out :-)

There are people...

First there was THIS.......

Then, there was THIS......

...and in between a whole lot of other stuff......Mammoth BBQ 2012 a happy success. Actually, this year - not so mammoth, because only 20 people came and so I could relax more and sit down and talk to people and eat and drink....and rescue the young guest who fainted after mixing medications with alcohol (stupid and cute girlfriend of a bike taxi driver). My friend who is a nurse leapt into action, we called an ambulance and stretched out the girl on Okaasan's carpet...but she started coming round luckily and 30 mins later she returned to the party and stuck to soft drinks.

And Okaasan? She realized at her lunchtime that there WAS a BBQ about to happen, and as expected - about 2 pm off she went to escape it all (including passed out girl on the carpet :-))

At 7 pm some guests were leaving and a friend telephoned me to say they'd come across Okaasan down the road under the subway line...hovering...and saying: "I can't go back yet, because there are people at the house"....and I walked out to meet her and bring her back home.

She was very tired, said she'd been downtown, her shopping bag weighed a ton with a big, glossy magazine inside. She was staggering a bit as she walked.

When we got to the corner near the house she could see BBQ guests in the garden still and she stopped and looked ready to run. She stopped in the middle of the road and looked uncertain and clutched her handbag.

I had to turn on the reassurance to overdrive: "let's go home, dinner is waiting, this is your home too you know, you go and come anytime YOU want, you don't have to worry about the guests. They are Yujiro's friends, they are Japanese. Just say a brief 'Hello' and then come in for dinner etc etc"

And I escorted her home. I really don't understand her reaction to   guests. She isn't a shy person at all, all she has to do is walk through the group and say "Hello, are you having a nice time?" and go inside.

Is this some return to a child's attitude to guests in the house? But she grew up in a home which was a business, so I imagine there were always visitors coming to see her father about his truck driving business. Which makes this people avoidance all the stranger. Is she embarrassed about her appearance?

I brought her inside and helped her with the heavy bag. Then cooked dinner and served her quietly at the kitchen table. One drunk guest suddenly burst mistakenly through the kitchen door, but apart from that the ending-party was well away outside.

She ate dinner and then slept by the TV.

And, still no hula mention. Wonderful. Some people have asked me whether it is possible to get her to the old people's hula class - and hope she doesn't notice what type of class it is. I think that IS possible in fact - same building, maybe same room and she won't remember the people from the other group.

But next week I go to the UK for 3 weeks, so I can only take her to that class this week. After that Yujiro would have to rearrange his work to do it....take her there...and he isn't motivated enough to bother. So, no....at the moment we'll just let the topic slip.

She hasn't asked, she hasn't been looking at her hula dance skirts in her room at all. It seems to have drifted away from her memory.

Which is goooood.

Finally. I mentioned a while back about dementia sufferers in the evacuation zones near Fukushima. How it must be SO hard to have dementia and have your whole world thrown into confusion.

There was a story about that in The Japan Times this week.

here is the link Dementia Dire among elderly in quake zone.

Still oblivious.

Okaasan still hasn't asked about hula dance class.


And we're not saying.


And that is the wonderful PLUS side of managing the life of someone with dementia...you can let tricky topics slip and slide away.


I guess that Okaasan lives in the same day, over and over again. Like my fave movie "Groundhog Day". She is always sitting there in her room, the TV is on with the familiar faces and sounds, she is wearing her flowery pajamas, there is a newspaper and magazine on the table and shopping receipts to check, if she goes to the kitchen there is lunch in flasks on the table or we are cooking and serving dinner. There are side trips to the toilet and to wash her face, or take a bath and do a little handwashing of clothes.
And that day goes on and on and on.
She isn't connected to the time/day/month particularly. It could be July or September, or Sunday or a Thursday. Maybe morning.


:-)


For us it a holiday weekend in Japan and we are having our annual, mammoth BBQ.
Did the big shop yesterday at COSTCO, the American superstore.

Cat food as a BBQ extra...

Today about 25 people will come to consume all the beef and fish and salads and cheesecake and beer and wine.
I'll feed Okaasan in the kitchen quietly late-morning and I expect she'll head out for a walk in the afternoon and hopefully feel confident enough to come home when she wants to.
Last year? I remember seeing her standing out in a parking area some way from the house, standing there for 20 mins or more looking at the house and the late guests still in the garden - and standing there. NOT coming home.:-(


So. Into BBQ day this year. 


and DON'T mention hula!!!

Shhhhh...

don't mention hula dance....