Dear LPG

I have continued to visit an Aunt who has spent the past three years living in a care home in the borough of Lewisham, and over that time I have watched her get older and less able to do so many things that she took for granted and that I took it for granted that she would always be able to do.

She is now well into her nineties and unable to walk more than a few steps without the help of a frame and two people helping her.  She can no longer feed herself, eats and drinks a lot less of what she is offered, and arthritis makes it really difficult for her to pick up a simple cup and put it to her lips.  She has lived with dementia for the past five or six years and there have been times when she does not recognise her visitors.  She now appears to look through the television, rather than at it, even when her favourite program is on.  I am no longer able to take her for a simple wheelchair walk into the home’s gardens because of her inability to sit upright enough to make that safe and so many of the other things she could once do have diminished.   There are many other little things that make visiting her quite difficult at times but if all I can do is sit with her for a while holding her hand (provided she does not pull it away) I continue to visit.  

Her doctors have told us that this is her last chapter and I notice that quite a few of the family that I would meet on my way to and from the home, as our visits overlapped don’t visit any more.  They either say that  it is too difficult for them or that they feel that she would not be able to tell the difference, but I have noticed that in spite of the fact that she does not talk and often is motionless when I visit, as I talk I can see the subtle changes in her facial expression which  are evidence of her understanding of what I am saying to her, in fact I have to say that, at times, her very weak but very visual response to some of what is said is even more evident now than it was when she was a little more active.

The reason that I have written this down is to remind all those relatives who feel that there is no longer any point in visiting at this stage, that we really will never know what it is like to be in that situation until we get there, and there has to be serious value in still receiving visits from loved ones of all ages, however hard it is for them.

OC, Beckenham