DEMENTIA CARE: AUTUMN IN SUMMER.

My advice as a carer is to think of autumn and winter in summer.
   That main room…
   No. There are many rooms that could serve as the main room when you are a carer. For example, there’s the main room of the kitchen. And the main room that’s a living room. Sometimes, the main room is a hall. When it comes to caring, whatever room you are in, doing all that caring, that’s your main room.
   For some people, the main room is the garden.
   We’ll say the main room is the living room, and stop there. This office, upstairs, is the main room – as far as typing goes. Almost everything recorded here happens elsewhere. There’s a lot I don’t write down. But today, in the main room…
   I looked around at the layout. And I thought I could improve upon the layout before Christmas. Bizarrely, this year more than any other, Christmas has been big in July. Well, we did just survive June-tember: a messed-up month that delivered September a whole lot earlier than expected.
   There were a few sunny days, and they were intense. I was told by care staff that they were forced to put the heating on when a few chill days hit. In here, it’s a matter of layers. This is the rule. You lose the need to heat the house in April. And, from then on, it’s a case of leaving the heating off until a chilly week in October.
   For all the cool days that occur in September, you add layers of clothes and keep your heating and your heating bills switched off. I understand elderly people feel the cold more keenly. This is why elderly people dress like elderly people – with all those layers.
   If it’s the difference between wearing an item that’s a cross between a coat and a blanket…and firing up the furnaces of Hades for a day…wear the coat/blanket. The bleak truth is there are elderly people who decide to heat the house in summer and then wonder why they are sweating like it’s the last day on Earth when the sun is about to engulf our tiny world.
   Don’t worry. That’s ages away. And life on our tiny world will be extinct long before the sun expands enough to consume the Statue of Liberty.
   Summer is the season of slumbering items. The summer prepares for the autumn and winter seasons. It’s all there, waiting. Heavy blankets. Multiple layers. Thicker clothing. Fluffier socks. Where do you store it all? Right there in the main room.
   With one eye on a space for the tree, come December.
   As a carer, you always need more space. I looked at the rambling layout I’d built up over the years. Surely I could tidy a bit. Make sure my autumn supplies are fit for purpose in the slumbering summer. No. I could tidy a lot. That was the reality.
   Fantasy was…a wee bit o’ tidyin’.
   Reality bashed me in the face with a hammer.
   I really had to move stuff. And evaluate everything I moved. Anything that looked remotely useless had to go. Then I discovered the things that lay out of sight. You go through phases as a carer, which means you go through phases of equipment.
   And, on the day when you should retire an item…you shove it out of the way for now as you are busy with many other things. Well, I uncovered a mountain of that shit and, by fuck, it had to go. I started filling bags. Then I went to the garden hut and dumped those bags in there. It isn’t quite time to put that bin out. My clearing spree fell a bit short of the correct bin cycle.
   As a result, the kitchen piled up with bags until the kitchen could take no more. That’s when I went on a voyage to the garden. Three winter blankets. Two pillows. Another two pillows. Oh, look, a discarded pillow. I’d bought a whole bunch of light T-shirts for summer…so I could safely ditch the old T-shirts.
   Some clothes go to charity. Others, beyond saving, fly around the hut in a bizarre linen holding-pattern. Waiting to land in the bin. Another blanket. A pile of sheets. Where the fuck did all this come from? In there. I packed it all in there, inside a high unit beneath the TV.
   The TV has to sit high so it can be seen from the bed. Plenty of space under the unit, in front of the unit, and behind the unit. I had storage four layers deep, until I cleared stuff out and eliminated a layer. Another layer will go soon. That leaves me the much-needed space for yet more things as caring continues.
   Dead towels, falling to bits. Those tend to go out of the house in single file, but I amassed enough of the rejects to fill a medium bin bag. Two pieces of mobility equipment went to the carers, who knew someone who would need the equipment soon.
   It’s a pyramid of priorities. Recycle. Arrange a good home for the items. Recycle. Charity. Recycle. The bin. And then the rubbish bin as a last resort. Even with so many options, I found myself having a real clearout this time, with stacks of bags earmarked for destruction.
   I unearthed usable winter blankets, and bought in new pillows, before I ditched the old ones. What do I have to show for it? A summer deck being scrubbed clear for a winter voyage into the ocean depths of caring. There are fresh jumpers and good strong layers for winter…
   No, you can’t rely on functioning heating. You must prepare for a catastrophic breakdown of the machinery. Then it’s on with the heavy gear and many blankets. If the gas fails us, I can now bring the electric fire back into operation. It was always an ornament…
   But now it is an ornament that could heat the room in a pinch. I made space around the fire, again. And I also removed a forgotten extension cord from behind the bloody thing. I was moving things around, into their last arrangement, when I must have trapped the cord behind the fire. The cord wasn’t plugged into anything.
   Well, the last arrangement is over and done with. Once more, there is space around the whole bed instead of around three sides. Handy, in an emergency. Also, maybe a touch easier for the maintenance guy to move around in when he turns up in about a month to service the bed, the inflatable mattress, and the ceiling hoist.
   Summer is now free of excess dead towels, dead pillows, dead T-shirts, and the lumpy space that held them. Space is now lump-free. I even unearthed a small footstool that carers park themselves on when writing reports. It wasn’t doing anything, stored end-up, out of sight and out of mind. Now it serves a purpose once again.
   (The new chair has its own footrest built in, y’see. So the footstool was shoved in a convenient nowhere until I remembered its existence.)
   If the gas and electricity fail, there’ll be layers upon layers. And those layers are fresh. All the failed ones are waiting to leave the hut. They have formed a disorderly queue. Everything in summer prepares for autumn. The gradual shift into coolness and the arrival of frost. I hope the hut will be empty by then.
   Autumn weather visited quite often in June, and occasionally in July. As I type this, yesterday’s morning rain was autumnal. Today’s bright sky is at summer’s height. Summer’s height in Scotland is a low-altitude affair. The fan blares away on over-warm days. This morning began cool and changed fast. Time for the fan. The radiators sit silently, watching all the useless items leave the building. Those radiators are currently useful. They hold the care team’s telephones. That ends in October. Don’t heat your phones.
   Summer is the time to check salt levels in the back cupboard. Year in, year out, I shovel light levels of snow and I salt sparingly over diminishing layers of ice. But one day the Ice Age is sure to return unexpectedly. And I think of this surprise shock in August, when I can arrange supplies easily. Before the rush. Looks as though we’re good again, for the coming winter.
   It was around 9.00 the other night when a deep dark cloud triggered the security lights early. I did the rounds, quickly, checking on winter coats, hanging like sleeping bats on this or that coat peg. One coat has had it. But the replacement is already there.
   As certain plants still flourish, others fade away. Gardening for carers may be a blessing or a curse. It gets me away from things. As long as I return to a cup of coffee with all fingers intact, I call that a bonus. I’ve been nothing but maintenance guy, lately. But if I don’t do it, who the fuck will? If I prepare as much as possible for winter before winter, there’s less of a slog in the depths of December.
   Snow is prettiest when you don’t have to wade through it to get food.