How time flies...

I can't believe that it is two years since I started (and lapsed) from writing this blog...How appropriate, that I called it The Dandelion Clock then! Thankfully, our seeds are still clinging and we haven't yet puffed our last toll of the bell.



For months now, I have resolved to write a letter to The Powers that Be, if only I could find out who they are. Tony B has gone, Gordon B is in his place and Home Care continues its merry way. Since I left off writing, I have joined two dementia action groups in attempt to do my very small bit to help improve the lot of those who follow on. Dementia is beginning to look like the Giant Squid of the NHS. Everyone knows it is there, but no-one wants to see it, or deal with it. It just lurks in the murky depths, waiting to ensnare the unwary!



We're one of the lucky ones. I can speak out for Mum and fight her corner but heaven knows, it's hard work. The boys, now two years older, are still wonderful and helpful but there is boiling resentment on behalf of their father who feels that we (I) must do everything and my brother nothing. Situation normal, then! Every family I have heard about, is in the same boat. One carer and the rest who advise from the sidelines or simply turn away. "Too busy". "Got our own lives to lead" (Yes, and...?) "Done my bit". One way or another, the sad fact is that Mum has been abandoned (?) - no, too dramatic a word - let down, by the most important men in her life. Her father put her in an orphanage when her mother died; my father divorced her when she was sixty; her brother neither writes nor calls because she doesn't know one end of the telephone from another, and my brother is too stressed with his own life. Who does Mum talk about all the time? My father, her brother and her son.

Unrequited love takes more than one form. I wonder - is this the price that all Eves must pay for having listened to that sweet-talking snake?!