There Are So Many Reasons It's Depressing I Have To Mention This.

I've met up with my mother!

Which is something we've been trying to do since Christmas. Expect then she fell off her horse and broke some bones. Then I got a Cold. Then I got another Cold. Then her horse got an abscess. Then I broke a tooth. Then her mother-in-law died.

So we just sort of reached the point where were like;

"Everything which exists has always existed and will always exist. F'ck it, shall we have lunch? It'll be summer before we get another chance."

So we had lunch and caught up on the details of all that. Essentially a competition of who has achieved the least over the past months and who has got the most to catch up on after all that wasted time.

Obviously though it's the death you'll all want to hear about.

I think that I've mentioned that I'm somewhat over selling it talking about my "Mothers." Partly as a small gay-rights protests. Mainly as a way to bait AI driven spelling and grammar checkers. Truth be told I'm hardly close to what, technically, is my step-grandmother. To the point my mother only casually mentioned her death to me about a week after it had happened.

She'd actually been detoriorating since the EBU failed to produce a result for the 2022 Eurovision Song Contest. Back when she was The 96.

Around the spring of 2023 she had a nasty fall. Which along with her detoriorating eyesight robbed her of almost all of her independence. This led to the sort of personality change which is often associated with Dementia. However all cognitive tests ruled that out. Suggesting she was simply in a bad mood most of the time. A north Welsh bad mood rather than a Welsh Welsh bad mood.

Really since then she'd been at the point that she needed to be in residential care. However did not want to be in residential care. Something which with no cognitive impairment was entirely her own choice. Leading to quite a complex compromise of a rotating roster of round the clock live in care workers. Along with many cross-country trips by her children.

Just before Christmas these care workers noticed that she was suffering with low potassium levels. Resulting in her being admitted to a hospital ward which was overrun with Norovirus. Something the medical side of my family certainly had opinions about.

After recovering from that hospital acquired infection it was clear that she could only be discharged to residential care. If she wouldn't give her permission then she couldn't be discharged. So she was transferred to an elderly care rehab unit, really to make clear to her that she needed to be in residential care.

In that rehab unit she got Norovirus again and then got Covid. Which saw her rehab care really turn into end-of-life hospice care. Something which still managed to last for six weeks, despite her having already really left by that point.

So it's certainly not good news. However it was hardly unexpected news. As is often the case with 98 year olds.

In slightly better news having been confined to bed or the sofa for the best part of three months my mother has had plenty of time to knit. Including a jumper for me. So with no sign of spring turning up any time soon it looks like I get another chapter in adventures in knitwear.