When you retire, it’s an often told fact that you will miss your work mates. They fill your days with their company, become friends, some more close than others, but if you’re lucky enough to work in a healthy workplace, as I was, they provide a social group experience that cannot be easily matched. It’s a community of companionship.

I retired when COVID became a global pandemic, so my experience of retiring was like that of everyone else: isolation and strict rules about where you could go. And so like everyone else, my mother and I waited it out. She was most affected by not being about to get her hair done, while my hair grew longer and longer, broken only by a few weeks here and there when the lock downs were lifted, only to be re-imposed again, and friendships were kept alive with emails and phone calls.

Her doctor kept seeing patients throughout, however, so we had working in our favour.

Gradually the situation got better. We were allowed to visit in small numbers depending on vaccination status. It all seems so far away now, the endless weeks and months of isolation.

For me, I had my mother and she had me. We got out for car rides in the bubble of an automobile.

It’s been four years now since my mother came to live with me, and I would not have it any other way. But as she has declined and my responsibilities for my mother’s care has increased, I grow anxious at the thought of meeting someone for lunch on the other side of town, where most of friends reside. (A movie is out of the question.) When I do go out, I try to stay close to home, a request which my friends seem only too happy to honour. Close enough that I can get home relatively quickly should something happen with my mother. We have Victoria Lifeline and should she needs help they will contact me on my cell phone. Call this paranoia, if you want. To me, however, it a precaution triggered by anxiety. I worry a lot, as I think I have mentioned before.

I understand people are available to sit with her, but I think my mother would prefer to be alone while I am out, not time she would like to spend with a stranger. Plus there’s that time limit, having to be home on time, clock watching.

Lately I have noticed an inner self lying behind my social self. When I’m with a friend, I hear myself talking, telling jokes, laughing, I feel a smile break out on my face, only for all that to disappear and my inner self, my regular care giver face, if you like, to emerge. A drained, tired self that lives in a present with no future and an uncertain past.

I can’t count the number of times people tell me I need to take care of myself. I’m sure they’re right. But how? If taking care of myself ends up creating more stress than the taking care of my mother does.

I’m not complaining. I’m just trying to explain all this, to myself, if to no one else.

Being in contact with some of the geriatric services available, is a help but not a solution. I’ve registered for a Zoom meeting to discuss the problems I and others in similar situations are experiencing. I’m curious to hear what others have to say.

Regardless, all in all, I am not unhappy. I have more time than ever before to sit at home and write. In fact, I am editing the manuscript of a short story collection which I hope to submit to a publisher in the near future.

But more of that, and other things later.