My mother, who has dementia, has been starving for weeks - not forgetting to eat but actually refusing all food as though she wanted to spite everyone, to spite the world, to fast in a negative sense, to ultimately die, like an anorexic. So she is in hospital.
She has a catheter and an occasional drip as she often refuses to drink as well. She has been treated for a mouth infection (candida) and (at last!) a Urine Tract Infection has been diagnosed, and the treatment is being administered by medicine. There was some talk of putting a tube down through her nose to her stomach and feeding her that way.
But today there was a packet of custard creams, with two missing, on her table. I idly wondered where the missing ones were. "Who ate the custard creams?" I asked her.
"I suppose I did." she said.
"Do you want another one?" I asked, giving it to her.
"Oh OK." she said, and put out her hand from under the covers, and took it and crunched a bit off.
I was so happy! Ha, HA!
And I thought many things, about how you don't know why you love your crazy old person who so often has you in despair, but nevertheless you do; and without meaning to at all, they can make you happy, sometimes, by just being themselves. And I did not envy my brothers who don't try to have any kind of relationship with her, or have any responsibility for her, because they are missing this extra little bit of life with its bittersweet emotions. It is like another parenthood. There should be a name for it like - mother mothering.
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