Blind Sided

I hear a crash from the other side of the door.

I hiss at Ant, 'what do you think it is that time?'. He smiles, shrugs.

Once, a few months ago, I'd have run to Mum's aid, hastily collected up dustpan and brush to whip the fragments of the latest casualty away.

I don't anymore.

I hear her curse herself: oh you stupid bloody woman. And then I hear the soft sound of sweeping, punctuated by the odd deep sigh.

Mum's stroke left her with right sided hemianopia, That means that she has lost the right sided sight in both eyes. A black curtain drawn across each. I try to mimic what she can see by winking my right eye tight shut. No, her therapist tells me on one of the sessions I attended with her when Mum was in rehab, what she can see now looks like this and she holds up her iPad for me to see two images drawn side by side. One is obliterated down the midline: that's what your mum's field of vision looks like now, she says.

We practise a bit after that, my little sister and I, to understand what Mum can see and what she cannot. We place mum centrally and one of us stands a few meters to her left, one the same distance away, to her right. Can you see me Mum, asks my sister to her left. Yes, perfectly, says Mum, confidently. Me? I ask, standing at her right. No. I take a step towards what would be the centre of her sight. Now, I ask hopefully. Nope.  Three more steps. Now? No, says Mum, sounding worried. Mum does not see me until I am almost directly in front of her. It is as if I - on her right (or wrong as it turns out?) side - was torn clean out of a photograph of the three of us. 

For a long time after Mum's stroke we learn to guide her, one of us walking to her right and slightly ahead, policing obstacles, buffers to oncoming corridor traffic. Slowly she learned, as her doctors told us she would, to compensate for her Blind Side.

But because Mum's stroke also robbed her of her ability to remember well, she forgets her sight is compromised.

Which is why we have breakages. Right handed, she frequently puts her glass or mug down on her right side. And she frequently knocks it for six, the contents spill, the vessel shatters and Mum curses herself, oh you stupid bloody woman.  Sometimes, surreptitiously, I try to nudge the glass in front of her so she can see it but this small task in damage limitation must be done with stealth so as not to embarrass her, treat her like a child.

I tell her, Mum, it's only a glass, it's only a mug, it's only a jar of marmalade (as it was this morning).

But for that split second, as the silence splinters, Mum is reminded, painfully, jarringly, of her handicaps.

It's why I no longer leap to help her clean up. I have told myself that in giving her the space, a little time, to recover her composure, to find a dustpan and brush, I am granting her the confidence that she can do this herself, that she bears the independence and the ability to clean up, even if she can't always remember that she can no longer see perfectly, even when she forgets to put her mug or her glass directly in front of her.  Even when she breaks things.

And in giving her a few minutes to recover herself, I protect myself from the momentary rage that flares in her.

There is so much that is hard about caring for a parent who is sick or old or ailing or compromised.  I think, though, that one of the hardest is treading the fine, fine knifeedge line between giving mum the support she definitely needs whilst also allowing her enough space to know she still can be: independent.

It's trying to fathom, often in a single splintering second, whom it is you're dealing with that day: patient or parent.