Mornng (if morning it be where this finds you), and season’s greetings. The good folk at The Guardian have let us back in the paper again. You can find the story here:
The faithful and observant will note some borrowed content from the last post, but there is new material as well, I swear.
To anyone coming here from the new Guardian piece, welcome. Again, you might bump into a couple of sentences you recognize in the next post but scroll down the page for fresh elderly larks aplenty.
If you missed it, here’s the original Guardian piece from 2019.
And news of the book, which, due to the ‘Rona, will now be with us in Spring 2022, it seems.
https://www.thebookseller.com/news/picador-pre-empts-reluctant-carer-after-viral-article-970451
Thank you for clicking and reading and sharing and so on.
A better New Year to everyone.
More here soon.
TRCx
The Reluctant Carer 
Thank you for sharing
LikeLike
Thank you, Ann. Thanks for commenting.
LikeLike
I can’t express how movingly you convey this. It feels so familiar. Humorous I believe your book is going to be a massive success. You deserve it.
LikeLike
Thank you, Liz. I hope so. Very happy to hear that this spoke to you though, that’s the main thing, reminds me to stick at it.
LikeLike
So pleased to hear you are all still buggering on,as Churchill apparently said. It’s a delight (?) to hear from you again
LikeLike
Cheers Linda.
LikeLike
Greetings, I loved the Guardian piece and just inhaled your blog. This is pretty much my life, except with just my mum, a novel I never seem to finish writing and being on the other side of the world. Maybe I should have written about this instead :).
It’s strange how nice it is to hear stories that mirror your own life. I don’t know if I could deal with my dad as well, I wish you the best of luck.
LikeLike
Thanks Deb, things had got a little easier but Covid has made it all more challenging again. I am glad to hear the writing helped, it helps me to do it. Good luck to you too.
LikeLike
Your intermittent missives are so appreciated, losing my father to pancreatic cancer this spring and caring for my 90yr old mother during this time is pretty grim. Thanks for the honesty and gentle humor. It’s a lonely world these days but your stories make it a bit less so.
LikeLike
There are many,many of us out there I think. It’s the illusion that life should be otherwise that does us in, I suspect. This is reality, not the adverts or the social media posts . I found I have to accept the sitaution (daily, hourly, moment to moment even) and then I can work with it without too much rancour. Sometimes I’m even calm. Good luck to you and your mum.
LikeLike
Really interesting piece that resonated with me and probably anyone who has ever had the privilege of caring for parents/family (even though doesn’t feel like it most of the time, who wants to see their loved one decay!). Like you say in reply to a comment, there can be rancour! I believe caring is hard because we’ve believed the advertising that life is always going to be happy and turn out how we plan it or what we want! Sometimes, I think we need to talk more about illness, disease, caring and death, definitely makes one feel less alone if caring and accept it more! Gosh, long comment, sorry, maybe I should write my own blog!
LikeLiked by 1 person