Greetings from Kent – I am staying in Kent with my parents – they have just gone to bed and so at last I am alone and able to do my blog post. My laptop is very old and tired and my internet connection exceedingly dodgey – so this might be a briefer post than usual – as letters seem to appear a few seconds after I have written them and only delete a few seconds after I have pressed the delete key – which makes it difficult to keep track of what I’m writing…I also seem to have enabled something that means that random videos spontaneously start playing as I’m typing – oh and a window has just come up trying to get me to renew my anti-virus stuff….ARRRGGGHHHH – just let me write my blog and go to bed!!

So…what to write about…driving down here I composed a blog all about my reactions to being stuck in traffic on the A11…it was rather good..and had a neat moral…

…but now I feel I should write something about being here, being the child of elderly parents…but I also feel protective – I told my mother today that I’m writing this blog and this opens up the possibilty of her reading it  – and – even if she doesn’t there is still the perhaps far more important issue of me invading her privacy by using her as a subject for my blog…and I am well aware that I have a habit of telling my friends anecdotes about my father in particular and enjoying making them laugh…

So…what to share…and am I going to try and make it amusing…?

No… I appear to be going back to the A11…

Today I drove from Norfolk to Kent and found a significant section of the A11 shut – due to work dualling the carriageway…and there was a diversion and – for the first time in my life I decided not to follow the diversions and join a long queue of traffic snaking along the diverted route,  but instead make up my own diversion in the hopes of keeping moving.  And this is what I did: I made a long detour – but I raced along beautiful lanes and roads, and had a wonderful time – and got to my destination in the end.

And I wonder whether this takes me back to my expectation theme -I managed to relax and let go of what my journey “should” look like, how long it “should” take and this freed me up just to enjoy the ride…

And this has been, I beleive, my approach to being around my parents these days. Last year my mother had what she would refer to as a “breakdown” and I came to stay with my parents for a month. The first week she barely let me out of her sight, she came to sleep in my bed each night, and if she fell alseep in her own bed during the day I was there holding her hand – so she had the reassurance of my touch and I was there when she opened her eyes. During the second week things had progressed enough for me to go to the supermarket and I remember driving there with tears streaming down my face – and my thoughts were all about the cruelty of getting old – all I could see was pain and deterioration and loss – loss of dignity, loss of faculties, loss of independence, loss of self…

But somewhere along the way…I know just where it was…but that’s for another post…somewhere along the way I left behind my sense of what “should” be and found myself “enjoying the ride” and now as I “race along the leafy lanes” accompanying my parents on our current journey – as we find out where this old age thing takes us – it is never about loss – it is always about wonder, awe and beauty…

I tell stories that make people laugh about various domestic ecentricities that go on in my parents home – they are good stories – though in this moment I can’t remember a single one of them – except my father’s habit of referring to me as “that boy downstairs” – as mostly he is very unsure who I am…

But in this moment – and I can feel my eyes pricking with tears  – what I want to write about is how he said, “Come back soon and make us happy!” when I left last time.  I want to write about the beauty of his smile – and the sense that I have now – more palpable than at any previous point in my life – that he loves me and that I brighten up his world – even though he doesn’t know who I am.

Leaving expectation behind – expectation that my parents can do all the things they used to be able to do – even expectation that old age looks / is any particular way – has freed me up to savour these last precious years, months, days with them. Having taken that phonecall – the one that told me that my brother was dead – I know that such things do happen – out of the blue suddenly you’ve reached somewhere that you thought was way, way off…

Although I know that I was stressed out of my head much of the time during that week when my mother needed me by her constantly – I know also that much of the time that I held her hand and watched her sleeping – that I was transfixed by how beautiful she was  – and I now think back to it as one of the peak experiences of my life – to have that time where I was so needed, where my love was all consuming  – where I wouldn’t have been anywhere else for the world…

I know I spent hours gazing at my daughters when they were first born…and, of course, that was amazing…but there is something even more beautiful about gazing at your elderly mother and feeling your heart open – a baby is perfect – but a baby is a beginning, a new life – an adult near the end of life –  an adult with whom you have had a rich relationship spanning decades – that is quite something…

So it looks like I am side stepping attempting to make you laugh with stories of mice, fusing kettles, a television on so loud it feels like you are on a runway, washing up without washing up liquid…and instead I am just telling you about me and my current “best time”…

My definition, when I started this blog, for me having the best time was: would I do it over and over again if I had the choice?  – hopefully you have worked out that when I am here – I have no desire to be anywhere else…but the thing that I am realising as I write this is how much I want to be here – and that is an exquistely precious thing in itself. I always trusted that I would “do the right thing” and do what I could to care for my parents in their old age – what I never anticipated was how I wouldn’t be anywhere else – I almost couldn’t be anywhere else – this is my place, this is where I want to be – and I want to savour every moment.