It’s been a long week, and it’s only Wednesday. Monday, I did quite a bit of housework. Due to snow and ice, I didn’t go out except to walk the dog. Tuesday, the weather was better, and I met up with my kid sister and we visited with Mum. I was feeling inept and had trouble parking the car that day. The lifts at the hospital are pretty useless and we walked up one flight of stairs. These flights are almost twice as many steps as an average house by the way. We then took the lift up one flight, then had to walk the length of the hospital to the correct ward. We waited and waited for the lifts, gave up, and walked up a further 2 flights. Part way up I was feeling dizzy and had to stand for a few minutes, holding the rail. I’ve had some bad headaches, I’m not sleeping well, and just felt unsteady. When we arrived, Mum thanked us for visiting, and that was the only sensible thing she said. She was prattling on, talking nonsense, and seemed quite oblivious to us. We asked to speak to her nurse to discuss her, but an hour later there was no sign of her. We had to ask 3 times for the auxiliary nurses to help Mum to the bathroom. The ward our Dad was on was so much better; the nurses were attentive, and the ward sister frequently popped in to check up on all of us. We’ve seen the ward sister just once for my Mum’s ward and each time we’ve visited, I’ve cleaned her table, got her a clean ‘glass’ for water, and have had to ask twice for blankets because she was cold. Not happy with them at all.

Wednesday, we had Dad’s funeral. It should have been sooner however snow, and not being able to collect the death certificate, delayed things. It was a lovely service, there were fourteen of us, and my kid sister did a great job arranging it all. Our middle sister was there, and she’d been warned to behave herself. For various reasons, our Dad didn’t want her there however we didn’t feel right leaving her out. In the interest of niceties, and good manners, she only had to behave herself for an hour and could she do it? Hell no. After the service she took me to one side and said she didn’t want me to hate her. I don’t and told her so, but she wouldn’t have it. She then laid into me regarding how our parents had been living and that I shouldn’t have allowed them to have all the animals. Excuse me, it isn’t my place to tell others how to live in their own house! She went on and on; I told it was nothing to do with me and walked away. I was so angry with her. For our dad’s sake, she only had to be ‘nice’ for an hour; it wasn’t too much to ask. Really, I shouldn’t have spoken to her except to say Hi but I don’t like to be rude; my mistake. Back in the car my kid sister burst into tears; all her hard work to make it a loving, peaceful event, and the other sister had to ruin it. I’m done with her now; what she did was unforgiveable.