Its been a year now since Mum and Dad had there first covid jab. Dad has changed greatly over the span of this year, but in many ways he is still Dad. He dementia is slowly getting worse. We are fortunate that he is lovely, not aggressive or violent. Instead he is very anxious and forgetful. Its little things that remind you how much the dementia has progressed, like when Mum asks him to put the hot water bottle away, he can find the hot water bottle, but then will hold it for a bit, look at it, then replace it back on the table.

Another day he came round to mine. Sitting on the settee he spend a good 10 minutes looking first at the floor and then at the ceiling, head moving up and down. When we asked what he was looking at he replied

" we have a ceiling like that too!"

Then you get moments like Nottingham comes on the TV.

"Look that's Trent Bridge "

His sense of humour also shines through. He can't get his gloves on now, so he sticks out his hands and one of us puts them on. Mum and I were both doing this in order to get to the village shop. Because the two of us was helping Dad, he ended up turning 360 degrees round.

“ I am not a screwdriver you know” is what he said.

All the way to Winster shop he is asking me

“Do you know what we are doing?”

“Yes we are going to the post office then we are going to buy bread, bacon and tar tar source.”

We walk for a minute.

“Do you know what we are doing?”

“Yes we are going to the post office then we are going to buy bread, bacon and tar tar source.”

This is repeated all the way there.

Another day this week Mum wanted a shower, however Dad now can't be left on his own at all, and this means in a room on his own. He gets anxious and will stand outside the bathroom door asking if she is ok, what should he do. Usually I can come round to take Dad for a walk or do a jigsaw, but today I couldn't so she gave him a proscribed anxiety tablet. Normally he has half. Well this meant Mum could shower peaceful while dad watch trains on the TV. However it also made him very sleepy. So sleepy that he spilled his drink everywhere! Simple everyday activities are now becoming difficult.

For lunch Wednesday I took them both down to tall trees garden centre. The route is the same way as Dads respite care place. All the way down the hill he is going

“We aren't going to that place are we”

“Please don't go to that place”

“I don't really want to go to Ludlow.” We don't know why he calls it ludlow. And we can't work out why he doesn't want to go. We are not allowed in due to covid. The lovely care works do wear masks, and they test Dad before he can mingle. We know they look after him very well, they do exercises and games, dominoes, scrabble and throwing games along with arty activities. Then they feed him lots. He only stopped worrying about it when we turned right to the garden centre instead of left.

At the garden centre I take his hand while Mum hobbles behind with her two sticks. We now need to hold his hand if we actually want to get anywhere at all. We go into the garden centre and Mum finds friends to talk to. I try to get Dad to leave Mum to talk without her little shadow. He is not sure about this, what happens if she can't find us. We wander over to the café and stand waiting to be seated. I can feel Dads hand tighten nervously round my hand and he is gazing where he last saw Mum. All the time asking

“Where is she? Do you think she will find us?”

I try to distract him by talking about tea and cake that we might have. That backfires a bit, because then he worries about who will pay for it. We get seated just as Mum comes into view, Dad wouldn't sit down until Mum was in the cafe and sat down first.

We then had another spell of looking at the ceiling. This time, however, it was through glass. Dad watched the clouds and the sky for a time and then stated

“The sky is expanding you know!”

He did enjoy his toasted tea cake and half a scone, even though he had never had one before.

Tuesday was market Dad. I managed to park in Wirksworth. I took Dads hand to move him towards the market. Dad asked me excitedly

“if I had seen “It” on the thing.”

I had to work this one out. what was it I was supposed to have seen, and what was the thing?! Since Dad kept repeating the words I got no more clues, except I did have my phone in my hand. Maybe this was the thing. Dad sort of knows about social media. I think he believes some of Mums friends live in the computer. I also think he is posing for photos because he knows vaguely that we can show them to daughters and sisters and other people.

So I had the thing, just to work out what I was supposed to have seen on there.

Then next clue was that he started to talk about how important and wonderful Mum was. How much he loved her. This reminded me that Mum had be told the night before that she had to take a picture and put it on the thing.

The day before Dad had a few hours in respite care. One of the activities was colouring in a valentine's picture. The idea being that the following week they add it to a card. Dad was so pleased with being able to do something for Mum, he insisted on bringing it home straight away. Getting Mum to show his daughter's and sister. And then making sure I had seen it too. He wasn't happy until I got the picture of his colouring in up on my phone. He then told me how lovely and wonderful and important Mum was, adding "sorry but she is more lovely than you, hope you don't mind"

It might have had its difficult times, stressful and emotionally hard time, But Dad is lovely and wonderful. Each week is a bit different. Thinking ahead can be scary too. But there is a great deal of love left.