When you have a baby there are about eighty billion books to choose from to help you through it. I mean I get that.  You have a small human to keep alive and who doesn’t need some sort of manual on that?!

You get the books that talk you through what will happen, then what is happening (size of a pea, size of a melon) and then you get them on how to feed, how to parent, how to do all the stuff until they are practically adulting.  And I know a book doesn’t cover everything, but it’s a bit of a guide, right?

The other end of the market though…that doesn’t seem to be covered.

***This is a long post.  You night want to grab a cuppa and settle somewhere comfortable***

I have two elderly parents (sorry Mum and Dad). Two and a bit years ago they didn’t seem old at all.  They were active, self sufficient and did their own thing quite happily.

Then Mum had a stroke and things started to change.  Slowly at first, and then the last six months or so have been some kind of baptism of fire.  Not just any baptism of fire; of course not.  It was more of a baptism of fire with blindfolds.  And nobody to shout directions.  I think we all have the blisters to prove it.

So a guide, or a resource on what the bloody hell we are supposed to do at a practical level would be really useful at this point.  But it turns out almost nobody has written a guide on how to do this part of life, not even how to muddle through it.

I say ‘almost nobody’ because there are guides on specific things, but what I’ve discovered is you need to already know a lot of these things in order to find out the information and sometimes it is so blimin’ complicated that it reduces you to tears of frustration (a good day) and red hot rage (the not so good days).

To cut a long post slightly shorter, in addition to the slightly daft posts about life and crochet and dog plods and crotchety old cats, and some step mumming stories (because honest ones of those are hard to find too), I’m going to change the direction of this blog a bit.

I still want to bring you smiles, but alongside them, I want to give you an honest insight into the slight chaos we all eventually drift into as our parents get older, finding the humour where I can as I think that might be the only way to get through the muddles.  And more importantly, the bit I wished I’d had a year ago: access to the stuff that I have already found out and the stuff that I am going to continue finding out as, along with my sisters, we support our Mum and Dad. (I’ve talked this through with Dad – he’s totally in favour of it.  Mum….well, honestly, mum doesn’t understand.  But I’m confident she would be behind it if she did).  This might not be relevant to you now, and if that is the case I hope the smiles are enough to keep you here.

To give you a bit of an idea of the sorts of things I’ll be covering soon, in the last six months I’ve learned about / applied for / been interviewed on / filled out forms on / done a one handed handstand and counted backwards from 100*:

• Blue badges
• Discovering that older people are (in this case) not listened to by their surgery
• What’s required to get a GP to talk to you / listen to you about parents
• Identifying and pushing for tests required for acceptance to their local hospice
• Talking to the family about how the hospice isn’t just about dying and how it can help
• DNRs
• Hospice appointments
• Power of attorney (I completed these myself and made mistakes and now know it takes an average of 33 minutes to get through to a human on the helpline)
• Attendance allowance (including an interview with man from the fraud department with very sweaty palms which seemed a bit topsy turvy to me…)

*I didn’t.  It just felt like it.

And my aunt died last year, so I got and am getting some insight into the probate side of things from and entirely non-legal perspective.

In addition to this, I volunteer for my local hospice – in that role I’ve been matched with a hospice client who is lonely as a result of his illness and essentially, I’ve become his friend, visiting every week or so. That gives me a different angle too.

Oh, and I am a therapist,  And there are some cross overs there too.

And that’s just where we are now.  There will be more; I know there will be more.

I’d love you to come along on this journey with me because, well…we have each other and there are a few amazing people who venture over sometimes, but sometimes our little family feels a bit like an isolated island and it would be nice to have people waving at us, just so we know you are there.  And if that is how you feel too, drop a note in the comments and I’ll wave right back whenever I see you 👋🏻

And I promise to always be honest, try to be helpful and do my best to retain (or at least find) the humour in situations that can be a bit tricky.  My version of a Muddled Life Guide for the other end of the market :o) 🙂