Florence now – at nearly 105 years old
Its end of April 2019 and just one month away from Florence’s 105th birthday. For my first blog on my mum Florence I looked at her 100th birthday party. It felt right to go back to something lovely and to honour the happiness and joy for her and for us about getting older and becoming a centenarian. So how does it look and feel now ?
Well its very different from 2014 when she was 100. Its much more difficult for us and for her.
A few years ago Florence’s dear friend Betty at the Court where they both lived, died and although she had obviously lost many friends and family members over the past 30 years, this one seemed to be a sort of final straw. She was not able to or didn’t want to discuss much about how she was feeling. But it was clear she was very sad to lose Betty and perhaps she felt that it must be her turn next. She was of a generation and culture who simply did not open up much. And that was reflected in her personality too. She was very sad when people died and would talk about them a little but that was as far as it went.
Florence did not just suddenly go down-hill. Gradually over a period of time we all began to realise that her memory was not what it was. She had always had a brilliant memory, both long and short term. Then while her long term memory remained powerful for quite a long time, she began forgetting little things, domestic things, things about her grandchildren and great grandchildren that she’d had at her finger tips before.
When she first started losing her short term memory she’d joke about it and say she was getting Alzheimers. I remember reassuring her on a few occasions that she couldn’t have Alzheimers because she was too old for that, which she found quite funny. In fact right up until quite recently it was easy to make her laugh, particularly about anything to do with herself. She particularly had good fun with those of her carers who went out of their way to make her laugh too. She still does perk up when people are trying to amuse her and keep her attention going. Or indeed when she has a small glass of sherry in her hand before Sunday lunch, which is quite a ritual at the court.
Up until a year or so ago, she would talk for hours about the old days when she was a child and a young girl going with her mother Annie across the fields in North Wales, on a long walk to Wood Cottage where her father’s mother Mary Anne who she called Nain lived. Florence could talk a donkey’s hind leg off about the past. She watched quite a lot of TV and liked David Attenborough and Country file, tennis whenever it was on and she was quite a fan of ‘Politics Today’. I know she was still relatively OK in 2016 because she had a postal vote in the Referendum and told me she’d voted remain, not for herself but for her grandchildren and great grandchildren. I was really surprised and very proud of her.
She paid all her own bills refusing to have gas, electricity or telephone bills paid by direct debit, because she said ‘’you never know what might happen if you do that direct debit stuff, the bank might take more money”. She never missed paying a bill, in fact that’s one of the ways we began to realise just a couple of years ago how much she was forgetting. One week when the phone would not work , we spent hours investigating with engineers why it wouldn’t. Then we or they discovered it had been cut off because she’d forgotten to pay the bill. Then the electricity board got in touch because they knew she was very old and she wasn’t paying that bill either. Then quite a lot later she started forgetting to pay shopping bills when her carers went out to buy her a bit of shopping. We had to take over all administrative and financial tasks, which she wouldn’t have allowed us to do at all a few years earlier. It was quite a watershed. She was losing the control which she had so liked to have over little things and choices in her life.
There were some good things though. She didn’t want to bothered with anything she didn’t feel like doing. This seems very reasonable at 103 or 104 years of age. Except, she knew that people would chivvy her along and say they were ‘good for her’. So, rather than have a show down, which had never been her way of doing things, she started telling lies.
I did love some of that, partly because when she got away with it she found it really amusing. She had no shame at all and she got very good at it. I loved the idea of my mother becoming this cheeky old lady having us all on.
For example, she has a bathroom with a bath and no shower, in her flat. She’s never been in a shower in her life and the bath is quite high, but she didn’t want any changes beyond a few extra handrails. She has carers who get her up, help her wash and dress every morning and two mornings a week it was bath time. She did not want to have baths any longer. At first could be cajoled into it. She was actually quite sprightly and able still to lift her legs relatively easily. But then she must have decided – no bath. So, she would tell the carers on Monday ‘I don’t need a bath I had one at my son’s house on Sunday’ which was totally untrue. This worked for a while until the carers caught on and would phone me or my sister asking us to have a word with her, which we duly did. Then Florence thought of a way around that too. So when my sister or I would ring to ask if she’d had her bath that morning she’d say ‘oh yes it was very nice’ but of course she’d refused to have it. This was a drama that went on for a good while.
But the wonderful thing was that when challenged about this, she would just giggle. She was clearly enjoying it and above all determined not to be thwarted from what she wanted. She won I’m pleased to say, and she didn’t have baths anymore, just daily washdowns.
It’s hard to get her talking about the past much anymore. She will look at photographs of family and friends old and present for a short time. She tries hard to remember things for a little while before her head sinks down, she closes her eyes and seems to be somewhere else. She can still operate the TV and watches it fairly often. If someone is with her, she’ll sometimes become quite interested in what she’s watching, but not for long. She looks at the daily newspaper {the Daily Mail unfortunately). She sometimes looks at women’s magazines a bit, but she doesn’t much like listening to music or the radio.
She’s started asking things not once but twice and then many times more.
Florence: ‘whats that box on the table over there’ answer: ‘its a box of biscuits mum we bought for the children’ Florence nods a ‘that’s fine’. Five minutes later (or less) Florence: ‘whats that box on the table over there’ answer: ‘it’s a box of biscuits mum we bought for the children’ Florence nods a ‘that’s fine’ ……… and so on. Sometimes and we all do it, we’d say ‘mum you asked me that two minutes ago, so what is it on the table ?’ She enters into it almost enjoying it as a game and very occasionally she gets there or nearly there.
You might ask what did you have for dinner mum, chicken she might answer after a long gap while she thinks about it, but you know it wasn’t that on the menu. I read a book the other day about dementia which suggested carers should never ask many questions and hence risk worrying the elderly person if they don’t know the answer. However, it doesn’t seem to worry her and it’s still quite a good way of getting her to engage a bit.
Physically she’s much more frail. She cannot make it into the kitchen anymore. She’s very wary of leaving her flat, even when she has one or two members of the family with her and she’s going out in her wheel chair. She still walks a little with her frame on her own to the bathroom, then back to her living room and arm chair, though she now often needs help to do that. At lunch time she moves from her armchair to the table a few feet away. Then back to her arm chair after lunch. After her tea which she has in her armchair, she stays there until bedtime when her carer comes to help her undress and get her into bed.
Florence’s flat is on the third floor and she sits in her armchair facing a large bay window. She used to love looking out at the clouds and talking about the cloud shapes. “ Oh look there’s the Pope” she might say or “look two horses galloping”. She’ll sometimes do that now if you point possible cloud shapes out to her. She has a whole gallery of family photos on her big windowsill and it seems to give her pleasure to have a vase of flowers there too. She has a Buddha ornament bought for her by her son-in-law from Singapore and she once told me she rubbed his large tummy every morning for good luck when she got up, she couldn’t manage that now even if she remembered.
But, she’s still with us and fairly spirited on a good day and she still likes a delicious piece of cake and/or a small glass of whisky.
