Wednesday 29th April – I Am Home

It’s ten thirty at night and I have been on the phone  for hours, catching up with all my lovely, concerned friends. My throat hurts, my ear hurts and I am frankly sick of talking about death and all its utterly horrible accompaniments.

My brilliant father came to Norfolk yesterday to pick me up and help me out with a few last jobs that needed doing, and then drove me all the way home.  I spent last night at my mum and dad’s getting reacquainted with my gorgeous son who alternated between being pouty that I had gone away and being delirious that I had come home. 

Today I came home properly and went to pick my lovely girls up from school like a normal person.  It was very, very weird.  I feel like I have been away for about a thousand years, and it is really hard to comprehend that everyone else in the world has carried on their lives as normal and that things like school and homework and squabbling children are still going on.

I have spent the rest of the afternoon and evening attempting to pick up the pieces of my life from where I abandoned them nearly a fortnight ago.  There are things like Brownies and birthday parties and Rainbows and dinner money to think about now.  I can’t quite get my head around them.  I have spent the last  fortnight thinking about wills and funerals and solicitors and care homes and it just doesn’t stack up.

I feel like I’ve got the world’s most monumental case of jet lag.  It’s that feeling of still travelling emotionally and mentally even though my body has landed.

And I am tired. I am so utterly, totally tired.

Things are still not resolved.  The funeral went as well as can be expected given the ramifications of difficult family members and the fact that it was in Norfolk.  That has been the high point of the week, which will give you an indication of what is happening with everything else.  Nobody wants to clear the house, which means we will probably end up doing it ourselves, and despite me cleaning and clearing and tipping like a loon it is still dirty and full of furniture and crumbling round our ears.  There are still holiday makers we haven’t managed to contact who are randomly getting in touch in dribs and drabs.  Jason is no further forward in his decisions over what the best thing to do with the house is.  All I know is that at the moment there is nothing else I can do that is important enough to keep me away from my children.

As for Jason’s mum’s partner who I am now going to call MP, because I can’t keep on typing that anymore, things are about as bleak as they can be.

By Friday evening we had drawn a blank with Cornwall and its supply of care homes.  Because he is no longer a Cornish resident, even though he was born there and lived there for fifty years, they don’t really want him back.  So they are making it as difficult as they possibly can.  By they, I mean social services and local government.  He is not eligible for help unless he is a resident.  He cannot be a resident unless he has lived there for 26 weeks.  Unless he can get into a home he cannot reside there.  Some homes won’t have him unless he is a resident because they need a guarantee of funding which non residents cannot always give.  The amount Norfolk will contribute is not enough for even the scummiest home in Cornwall.  Someone has to make up the shortfall if he is to be considered.  Even if they consider him nobody will take him untill they have seen him. 

On Friday we called the social worker in despair.  In Norfolk she can get him an emergency place in 48 hours. We asked her to go ahead, just in case we needed it.  On Monday after the funeral she called to say there was a place. Just one, in all of Norfolk.  We took him to see it.  It was adequate. Adequate but horrible, and in the middle of nowhere.  If he was there he would have nothing to do and no visitors. 

We had a crisis meeting with the social worker.  She said our best bet was to get him down to Cornwall and hope we didn’t have to turn round and drive him back to Norfolk at the end of the week.  Even she admitted the outlook was grim.  She has, it has to be said, been utterly brilliant.  I never thought I would say those words in connection with a social worker, but she has been kind, thoughtful, totally respectful of MP and his position and has worked like a dog to help us in every way she possibly can.  She has moved heaven and earth and I wish I could put her in my pocket and use her in other emergency type situations.  She has been the nicest person I have dealt with in the entire two weeks of shit that has been storming around us.  Her and the funeral director were the two ports in our storm.  Thank God.

We hired a van and spent Monday night packing it with MP’s stuff.  He wanted to take everything in case he gets a flat.  This is almost impossible if he stays in Cornwall, but he got so distressed on Sunday that we couldn’t think of a way to break it to him and decided the kindest thing would be to pack everything he wanted and just pray that something miraculous eventually happens.

 We got up at six on Tuesday morning and finished packing.  Jason drove the van, his sister drove MP in the car.  They set off at 7.45 a.m.  They got to Cornwall at 5.30 p.m.  The b&b was expensive because it had to be disabled friendly.  Jason says it is the best disabled friendly hotel he has ever seen and that the owner is amazingly understanding and good.  Despite that, the grab rails on the toilet are still not in the right position which means that MP can’t use it without help, which is sad. 

By 6.30 p.m. last night,  Jason had already visited two homes, both of which were suicidally dismal.  He then drove to MP’s relatives where he unpacked the entire furniture van and then had a crisis meeting with them.

He has spent all day today crossing Cornwall looking at homes and arguing about funding with Norfolk and Cornwall social services.  By six this evening when he finally rang me it seems they may have found somewhere that will just about do, but they have to agree funding.  Even so it is merely acceptable.  It seems there is nothing else to be done but get him in there and wait 26 weeks and see if the amount of help and advice available improves.  Things were so bad earlier that one sympathetic care assistant recommended that they take MP to the local hospital and leave him there because that way the social services would be under obligation to find him somewhere better suited to his needs.  As it turns out, this is not true.  If they do this, social services will simply send him back to the emergency home in Norfolk and refuse to let him come back to Cornwall unless he pays privately for everything.

Jason has until tomorrow lunch time to find somewhere or he will either have to abandon MP or bring him back to Norfolk.  Bringing him back is the worse of the two options because nothing can be resolved in Cornwall unless MP is physically there.

It sucks. It sucks so much that I have been actually praying for a miracle.

I am also cross.  I am cross that MP’s relatives, who are really close relatives, about as close as a person can get, are not and have not done enough to help.  If MP was my relative I would be mortally ashamed of having basically made a show of doing something for an entire fortnight without actually having either a) come to see him, b) come to get him or c) having actually done very much of anything at all.  I would also be ashamed that someone who is in no way related to MP has done what I should have done and had to force me to take responsiblity.  Merely saying the words; ‘I’ll have him,’ is not enough.  Not only has nothing practical been done for his benefit, help or care, but no financial assistance has been offered at all.  Not one single, solitary penny.

I am sure there are wonderful reasons for all this, and I am probably being over judgemental and harsh, but hey, it’s my blog.  And I’ve done my share of the grunt work over the last fortnight and I’ve only met the bloke half a dozen times in my life.

I am cross because Jason could have been home on Monday afternoon with us if all this hadn’t needed to be done.  He could have been in work by Tuesday, earning money and attempting to secure his career on a more safe footing, but no, because some people were only paying lip service to the idea of looking after family members, he has had to put his life on hold again.

Still, in fairness serious talks were had today and those some people have finally had to face up to their responsibilities in a more realistic way and actually get off the fence and start doing things.  MP has not had a good few days health wise and they were able to see just what is needed in terms of care, which although a shock, was also needed.  As of tomorrow they are actually going to have to take over completely, as Jason and his sister have to come back to Norfolk no matter what.

So here I am, at home but not really at home, unsettled, slightly crazed and missing my husband like crazy.  I’m worrying myself sick about him.  He has had no time to grieve at all, he’s full of anger and frustration and stressed beyond belief.  He is driving about the country for hours and hours, existing on rage and adrenalin and without me there to nag at him I know for a fact he is not eating properly because I’ve practically had to sit on his chest several times this week regarding nutrition being his friend.

Even when he gets home there are still a hundred, small and horrible jobs left to do and it’s all pants.  And it seems increasingly likely that we will still have to drive to bloody Norfolk on several occasions hereafter and now probably down to Cornwall on a fairly regular basis as well.  Cornwall is more beautiful than Norfolk but we’re talking a good six or seven hour drive instead of a four hour drive. Arseholes.

I would like to write some cheerful blog entries.  I miss being cheerful.  Don’t get me wrong.  Some things have happened that have really made me laugh over the last fortnight. I’ve not changed that much. Trouble is, I can’t tell you about any of them, just like I can’t tell you about any of the really horrible things.  The things I would tell you if it was just me.  Not that you’d want to read them.  It would help to write them though.  I might write them and then delete them, although that’s not really the same. Not for me.

Tomorrow I’m sure there will be more misery to share.  On the other hand, with the children around there may well be some light spots in an otherwise evil time.  I am hoping that there will be cheerfulness to share.  It would be good.