DEMENTIA CARE: DECEMBER SNOW IN DECEMBER RAIN.

What falls? All the rain and a little bit more for the fun of it. In the middle of that, snow flitters. It’s fake snow, attached to a fake tree. I have a hell of a time putting that fake tree up.
   The tree arrives in slow fast stages. In terms of tree-growth, it materialises with the rapidity of a plant popping out of the ground in a speeded-up documentary. But in terms of putting a fake tree up, the process takes half eternity and a little bit more.

Mobility decreases with time. And I ponder that as I lose all mobility myself, scrabbling underneath the tree’s metal base. With lack of movement, the cared-for needed a better chair to sit in…

In comes that better chair. The old chair goes – recycled and handed over to someone who’d gain better use out of it. And the other chair goes, too. There wasn’t room for that second chair downstairs. So I had to break myself into bits hauling it upstairs…

   I recovered from that episode in the long time it took to realise the chairs were on the way out. Somehow, I didn’t break myself in bits dragging the second chair all the way back down.

   A pair of chairs made a more appealing prospect to the new owner, I’m sure. As long as the new owner had a crew of twenty people to shift the big chairy fuckers.

Those chairs were too chairy.

The new chair was part of the start of change – big change – in furniture. That big couchy couch had to go, to make room for the heavy-duty folding bed. And the heavy-duty folding bed would make way for a hospital-style bed.

   With the chairy chairs out of the way, and the folding bed turned back into a chair, there was a bit of room for the new chair. Lame humour coming up. An electric chair. Add your own lame punchlines.

   That hospital-style bed was adjustable – higher, to make it easier to climb into and rise from. An electric bed. And an electric chair, with the same height adjustment going for it.

   Old couch gone. And old chairs away. Old folding bed folded into a chair for a visitor who can sit low and stand from that position as well. New chair and new bed. Anything missing?

Come December, the big fuck-off tree waved its branches in hello. It sat for most of the year in two long plastic boxes, inside the cupboard…behind the wheelchair and the folding ramp.

   I didn’t move any of the obstacles. Instead, I lifted the tree boxes over the mountain range of mobility accessories. And my struggle began. I had to clear a space to assemble the base part of the tree…

Just to measure it.

Measuring the width of the widthiest part of a widthy tree was effing important. With that out of the way, I could move the new chair to the right place.

   That place allowed the tree to sit on one side, with enough room on the other side for the walking-frame to pass in and out of the room. Extra fun – the chair wouldn’t topple the tree when in operation, helping the cared-for to rise.

   This was a major operation. The end result wasn’t perfect, but it worked. I came away with a visible cut to the back of my right hand, where a vicious tree slashed me…and an invisible injury to the front of my left hand…

   That annoys me even more than the cut to the other hand. I can see the cut, and I understand the cause of any pain there. There are aches and pains and strains from my neck down into my shoulder, earned during the mighty struggle to connect the bottom tree lights to the middle ones and the middle ones to the top ones.

End result?
   The tree now sits at the front of the room instead of the back, where it normally goes. That’s a new arrangement that shakes the world to its core, believe me. The new position is the new version of where the tree normally goes.

   A tiny woman sees the tree more prominently now, no matter where she is in the room. From the chair, she turns and stares at the giant tree she wanted. And from the bed, she occasionally marvels at the twinkling lights. I’m calling this one a win.

My struggle was nothing next to the insane battle outside at the end of November, at night, in conditions growing stormier by the second. To match the electrical icicles put up by one near-neighbour, the new neighbour fought valiantly to have similar fake icicles in place.

   Fuck that shit. I had enough to struggle through, in putting a tree up indoors. December came and the neighbours had their icicles glowing, and swaying in high winds.

Indoors, I stared at snow on the ground while all the rain and a little bit more rain fell beyond the windows. I fucking love that weather. It’s great to stare at from the comfort of a cosy room.

   I was out in the teeth of it, but that’s another story.
   Memo: must vacuum that fake snow up. The snow directly under that tree will lie there until January, no matter how much rain falls.