Grandad

After the joy of yesterday's big Scouse wedding, something of a comedown today as I went to visit my Grandad in the care home he's just moved into after a short spell in hospital.

He's 88 now, and since my Nan died three years ago he's been trying to live alone in the house they shared since 1953; but the onset of dementia meant that a man who's had everything done for him all his life really wasn't up to the challenge of living alone - and so the whole family was hyper-extending themselves trying to keep an old man in the house he loved; which has just led to stress and illness in the carers.

So after a short illness and a hospital stay, the decision was taken to put him in this care home last week. It's a fine place, and he's very well looked after, but the sadness is almost unbearable. Whilst he knows who I am, he was asking today to see his mother (who died in 1987 - in the same care home), and seemed saddened to be told she'd died ("she'll show me the back of her hand when she catches me"), and seems to be under the impression he's somewhere in Belgium, telling me "I managed to get in here without my passport - I don't know how".

Worst of all he keeps asking when he's going home, and seems to think that everybody else in the home is also waiting for their families to come and collect them to take them back to their homes.

It's monumentally sad. The confusion must be awful, and I feel terrible leaving him there, but know it's the safest place for him and he's well looked after. I live 200 miles away and can't help but think, every time I see him, that this might be the last time.

Someone said to me today that visiting a place like this should make you live your life to the full, because it's really only very short.

and life goes on
Within you and without you