A Day in the East With Birds and Mother

I have managed a few fairly unsatisfactory shots of ducks and geese, but my top bird moments today have been sans camera. There are house martins swooping and diving through the air in front of me, but I am not even going to try to photograph them.
Today has involved a certain amount of driving around, and it was this morning, on my way to see Mother, that I had my most exciting sighting; an owl in the trees by the roadside. I have had a quick look in the bird book I keep on board, and I am pretty confident that it was a Little Owl. I think it was the roundness of its head that made me slow on an already slow back road and take a second look. Athene, I thought, as I drove on to through the pretty village of Reach where one day I am going to stop and visit the pub, goddess of wisdom. Then I had a thought that owls are sometimes said to be harbingers of death. That probably is true if you are a mouse, but it also says something about where my mind is now regarding Mother.
It was good to see her. Glasses askew, she was dozing, warm and comfy in her pyjamas with a bed jacket over the top. For months we have been saying she needs a bed jacket on (she has two, both very pretty and comfortable, bought for use not decoration) if she is sitting up in bed. Investigation also revealed she was wearing a vest under her pyjama jacket. The Welsh CD was on, loudly. I turned it down a bit and when it finished tried a cassette. The cassette part isn’t working. She has far more cassettes than she does CDs, so I suspect she has been listening the Welsh CD a lot. Ho-hum.
The day passed. Most of the time Mother dozed, she drank a little hot chocolate, ate virtually no lunch, drank a few hundred mls of some snazzy fruit juice I had brought; pineapple, peach and passion fruit. She is less present than she was. A bit like a waning moon, each time I see her a bit more has gone. She still loves being kissed, being told I love her, listening to the Daffodils. She is not in discomfort, can still make decisions: “No more,” she said very firmly, following up her words with a surprisingly strong arm movement, when the nurse tried to give her her Calcichew. Something of her remains, just not very much. I feel this time it is weeks, maybe a few months. Mother seems to be shutting down in front of us. If it is her choice, what her body is decreeing for her, that’s fine. I don’t mean I’ll be happy to see her die. I don’t think it matters how old you are, losing a parent is hard. The idea of a world without Mother feels an empty one. Somewhere, I believe I still hope the parent I knew, the competent capable mother who was always on the go, gardening, caring for people, listening to Radio 4, writing letters, baking, putting the potatoes on before she took her coat off when she got in from work, will reappear. It is not a realistic hope.
But given the alternatives, when I face the realism, a death sooner rather than later is preferable. With dementia, the only way is down. Better that she dies still able to speak, still able on some level to know me, to talk about me to staff as she did yesterday, to take pleasure in the warm water with which her hands were washed before lunch, to take a sip of fruit juice and pronounce it lovely.
The fire is going out. How long the embers will glow is anyone’s guess. Except, her embers will glow long after she dies. She will always be my darling mum.
As you will imagine I was thoughtful when I left. I drove carefully, aware that sometimes when I leave Mother my concentration on the road is not what it should be. On a whim, I decided to go by the farm shop and get some eggs. It’s a bit of a detour, but I am glad I took it. On the way back a flash of blue caught my eye. Sitting comfortably on a hedge on the outskirts of Freckenham was a peacock. He looked as though he might spend a while there. What do peacocks symbolise?
The fens around the marina are full of pheasants, brightly glossy in fields and on the verges. I saw a beautiful black Labrador on my journey this morning. Her attention was fully on her owner who had stepped off the road when a small convoy of cars approached. She is probably a gun dog, and a well trained one. Gunshot is common in these parts and often in early misty mornings you see groups of men in tweeds standing by land rovers. My own black Labrador was a gun dog who wouldn’t retrieve. Personally, I think it was because she was too intelligent.
MasterB has been bravely looking out of the back of the boat as the day, which has been cold and damp has morphed into a beautiful evening just before the sun goes down. The sudden emergence and noisy flight of a cormorant brought him hurriedly under my chair. But poor chap, he has been most intimidated by a loud tabby feral. Both MasterB and I went to the window to investigate the sound. The feral, seeing us, turned away, but MasterB also sank down below the window edge and opted for sleep. I hope the weather is fine when we get home and he can really stretch his legs. He’ll have a lot to tell Scally. I am not sure she’ll believe him.

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