Today is Christmas Day, 2018; and one feature of such days is that I (and many others, I suspect) think back to previous occasions. Mum’s last Christmas was 2017, and from 2014 these were spent while she was resident in the care “facility” in which she had been placed in the spring of 2014.
I had imagined that the facility, which charged extremely high fees, would make Christmas something special; to its credit, it seemed to do so at Easter. Mum was in reasonable form in 2014, but declined our invitations to take her out – she said that she preferred “to see what they [the facility] was doing here”. We did visit around Christmas that first year, but “not a lot” seemed to be the answer to her question. The view seemed to be that staff would want to get home, and so the residents were left with sandwiches for the evening. On occasions, I saw these “meals”, and it is odd to record that there is something poignant about a sandwich – such a pathetic thing in both senses of the word.
Mum stayed indoors at the place in 2015, and we visited in the later afternoon, to find noone about downstairs, and Mum in her bedroom with a small plate of sandwiches. One can sympathise with the need for staff to spend time with their own families, but this was at the expense of people like Mum. As so often, we felt unable to do much about this, and left after talking with her for a time.
2016 provided perhaps a brighter occasion, in that my sister was visiting from London, and the decision was taken to organise Christmas lunch outside. Mum was now using a wheelchair more often, and this enabled her to be transported to the Queens Royal Hotel in New Brighton, which was easily accessible to wheelchair users.
The Queens Royal had stayed open before, during and after the minor regeneration of New Brighton, with Marine Point and the revived Marine Lake opposite. It had been a favourite of Dad’s, when it was run by Berni Inns, a steakhouse chain. Going to “the Berni” was a feature of many weekends, and after he died in 1986 the remaining family went there from time to time. So this was a suitable location, although it had changed greatly since Dad’s time, and I’m not certain that Mum recognised it.
This provided one of the highlights of those four very difficult final years. My sister and brother-in-law, and their daughter, my niece, were there, with Mum in a central position. The meal was good – a carvery of sorts (even for vegetarians like me!) and the usual Christmas crackers and wine; Mum had some of the latter, and there is a nice photograph of her with this, that was later placed on the wall of her bedroom. She was somewhat uncertain who some of the guests was, and especially the relationships between them. But later we got her singing Christmas songs, something that was surviving with her, when more coherent narratives were doubtful. The jollier side of Mum could be submerged, but it could be brought back to life.
Sad news followed this last Christmas out – a development of which Mum was never aware. This overshadowed our visit – the only family members to do so – on Christmas Day 2017. We had been told that there would be “tea” in the lounge at the facility, but when we arrived, there was only one family in the lounge, and they soon left. We went upstairs and found Mum despondent. I had brought some batteries for a little tree that she had in the room, and got this going. Eventually, with some reluctance, she was persuaded to go downstairs in the wheelchair.
We sat her in the inner hall, a space that was rarely used by residents, so that she could watch the proceedings, while we waited for “tea”. She often liked to sit in the corridor before dinner, watching people go by, but today seemed confused. By now it was raining torrentially outside, and, as so often, the front doorbell was being rung repeatedly, with no-one attending. There was no reception at weekends, with noone thus to answer the door, so that harassed care staff were expected to answer it when they could. There were even less people on duty than usual, so I took pity on the people at the door and went to let them in. Shortly afterwards I was told, by a staff member that I had not seen before (and never saw since) that I should not answer the door, as there was someone who was banned from entry.
This was an unpleasant development at Christmas, but a sense of humour was required when, finally, “tea” was served. I had thought that this might feature the odd sandwich and piece of cake, but in fact there was one cup of tea or coffee, and one biscuit. A supermarket Swiss roll would have cost £1, and this would have served the ten or so people there, but apparently 10p each was too much. If I had known, I would have have brought one with me. A packet of cheap biscuits would be about 36p, making it just over 1p per biscuit. Pathetic, frankly, when (non-nursing) inmates were expected to pay around £148 per day. And the business concerned made £805 million in profits last year.
After that, we were told that a tea of a few sandwiches would be served in Mum’s room; we left before this feast could be unveiled. It was a tawdry and desultory day, and one that it was hard to brighten. I remain very sad about this, but I was never in control of events. Neither, in any sense, was Mum.
There should be fonder memories of Christmases, even within the confines of a facility like that in which Mum spent the last four years of her life. Perhaps I should have insisted that external helpers be employed, even they were paid for by me. They could have helped me to get her out of that place, safely into the car, to go somewhere decent and cheerful, where her personal needs could be met. And there would be someone, employed by me rather than by a profit-seeking institution, who would see her as someone to be cared about and cared for rather than the end product of a “service” labelled “care”. At least, in 2016, my sister and brother-in-law, and their daughter, had the decency to get her somewhere both pleasant and familiar, and also safe. It is that memory of her last real Christmas, poignant and yet uplifting, that I will treasure.
Postscript 23 December 2022: The Queens Royal Hotel has since closed, and stands forlorn and damaged today – its site will almost certainly be redeveloped for flats. Mum (and Dad) had some good times there, and I am glad that she seemed to enjoy her last visit there, to somewhere that was familiar.
Joan Boughey Recalled 