A Carer’s Diary – Episode 7

She paces the living room floor interminably. She sits at her desk and quietly weeps. She sits on the sofa and quietly weeps.  ‘I need a distraction,’ she pleads.   ‘Like what?’ I ask.
  ‘I don’t know. You need to choose. To plan it, to organize it, to get me there. I’m too bad to think about arranging anything.’

And so, I run gamely through the options. She often finds the journey, a journey, any journey, a curiously welcome balm when she is like this. Not the being anywhere in particular, just the getting there. The chance to sit and admire a different landscape, to allow a new scene, a changed perspective, to wash soothingly around her. It’s a fleeting distraction, no less, no more – but a welcome one. And so, we consider a ride to Banbury. To Nottingham. To Rugby. To Oswestry. Anywhere on the bus route will do.

The next day she is ready. We are going to Market Harborough. The ride is relatively short, but she wishes to do a bit of toy shopping for the parrot.
  ‘And we could sit somewhere nice and have a coffee.’

She does well with the bookshop. We kill a pleasant twenty minutes in there. But stepping back into the rapidly filling street, she immediately seems fazed and leads us off down a blind alley.
  ‘I don’t know why I went down there,’ she whispers, before recovering her sense of direction – if not purpose – and making falteringly for the shop with the parrot toys. The store is narrow-aisled and bustling, but Harriet successfully chooses the bits she needs and moves with me to the tills. A moment or two of static queuing, and she is ready for off again.
  ‘You pay,’ she says, ‘I’ll go and wait by Sainsbury’s.’

But when I get to Sainsbury’s she is nowhere to be seen. I step into the store itself. Search around the sandwich area, move deeper inside to check the first few aisles of the store proper – still no sign. And so I re-trace my steps and walk back over the river into town. She is nowhere to be found, so I head back again to Sainsbury’s to see if I’ve missed her, and finally I discover her on a bench, slumped and dazed and miserable. We chat a while, share a bottle of water, and she is eventually up to going into the store to choose a few groceries.

The first few aisles are busy, and the store is unfamiliar. We don’t know where to find a thing. Harriet is mumbling and whispering, her anxiety levels rising with every confused second among all these jostling, chattering people.
  ‘I need the fresh meat,’ she pleads. ‘Where is it?’
  ‘I don’t know,’ I answer, ‘I’m as lost as you.’

We continue to wander aimlessly for a while, never any closer to finding the items she seeks, though by now she has at least managed to chuck a carton of soup and a few token bits of fruit and veg into the basket … and then suddenly, without any apparent warning, she is off, quite literally running towards the main door. She barges into couples, into agitated lunchtime meanderers, as she goes, but never once looks back as they cluck and mutter at her clattering exit.

I ponder whether to chase after her or go and pay for the shopping. I dash to the nearest till and pay for the few bits, before charging off to find her. Again, she is not by the doors. I search the car park and the entrance area: no sign. I walk again, back over the river into town, glancing down the side-streets and the into shadowy alcoves: nothing. Finally, I discover her lying in a heap of blank dejection on the lower part of the grassy riverbank. People are peering curiously down at her. I rush over to help her to her feet. She is confused, dazed, miserable.
  ‘Let’s get you to the bus stop, honey,’ I soothe. She is ill and uncommunicative. At the shelter she is restless throughout the short wait. She stands up on the bench and will not come down, until finally, she jumps to the floor, landing hard and painfully.

Back home, after rest and a snack, she asks for her Swiss Army knife, which I have previously hidden. ‘I need to whittle these bits for the parrot.’ Later, she sensibly returns it to me.
  ‘You’d better take it,’ she says.
  ‘Not up to trusting yourself yet?’
  ‘No. No way.’