The essay about my carer’s life “Tomi-chan”

※Mr. Fukui, who is a member of AAJ and chose to move alone to take care of his mother, summarized his daily life as a caregiver in an essay and applied to us, so we would like to introduce it to you all.  We,” The Japan Dementia International Exchange Platform”, accept a wide range of manuscripts . Please also send us your manuscripts about your caregiving experiences.

Tomi-chan

　In February 2018, it has been 5 years since I started “single-care migration” for my Mom on the occasion of my retirement. It’s been half a century since I’d lived with my mother in the same place. It was when I was in my first year of high school that my parents moved from Osaka City to Kumamoto Prefecture due to my father’s work. Since then, I had been living a separate life from my parents, graduating from a high school in Osaka and a university in Kansai region, and I got a job at a company which had the head office in Sapporo,  I had been living in a region far from Kyushu for a long time. My partner was from Hokkaido, and my three children, my eldest son was born in Yokohama, and the younger two were born in Obihiro, and they all grew up in Hokkaido, including Obihiro, Sapporo and Asahikawa. I used to visit my families’ house (It might not be real…)in Kumamoto for the purpose of showing their grandchildren’ faces from time to time, such as New Year’s Day and children’s summer vacation, but it was not so close geographically, so it was not often. After my father passed away in 1994, Mom seemed to be enjoying life as an expert in living alone. She made a lot of friends with a social personality, and she went to the classroom for calligraphy and haiku as a hobby, and enjoyed excursions with my friends. She also sent potatoes grown in the kitchen garden to her cute grandchildren by courier, and sometimes came out to Yokohama and Sapporo to see their grandchildren. In other words, I haven’t been actively involved with Mom since I started working for the company, and I didn’t know much about her except that she was living alone well in Kumamoto. In other words, the person who had lived together until half a century ago, or rather, the person who raised me was like frozen stored in my thought as she was when I was a child, until the time of this “single care migration”.

　However, this time, with the progress of Alzheimer’s dementia, the Mom was no longer the ” Mom” I knew. I decided to move after consulting with my relatives, including my partner, and I thought it was a choice with a certain determination, but it was naive. I couldn’t respond like Mom ‘s change, and I also began to feel like my heart was getting sick with the passage of time in “single care migration” . I’m always irritated, I can’t get out of my melancholy mood, and I have a tingling attitude to Mom. When I didn’t see her face to face, I reflected on myself like that. “I’m doing it for Mom, but it’s actually the other way around.” I thought I had to be careful and be kind, but when the face-to-face interaction started, I couldn’t afford to do that way and I losed my self-control. However, we must avoid falling together at all costs. After thinking about it, it was from May 2022, three years after “migration for care by singlecaregiver” started, that I started renting an apartment a few minutes’ walk from my house. Fortunately, I was able to have my own time, and I was able to treat Mom with ease in my heart. Also, at that time, in order to keep a little psychological distance between Mom and be able to see the situation from an objective position, I decided to call her Tomi-chan (real name Tomiko). The strange events that occur in everyday life are not occurred by Mom (mother), if I switch my mind, but by Tomi-chan who had done mischievous things, I could keep some calm. I should be able to calmly think about what I should do and act. In the first place, it’s because of the symptoms of an incurable disease called dementia, so I thought to be sorry to my mother, but I should finish “the living Mom’s funeral in my heart” and would go out to live with another character, Tomi-chan, with ease.

・When I was living in the same house, I was waken up in the middle of the night her saying “my ankle is cramp”, and then I gave her a big cup of water and 1 tablet of medicine (actually small mint sweets), she completely healed and went to bed again (She was✖ Mom/〇 mischievous Tomi-chan.).

・I left my apartment before 5 o’clock in the morning for housework, and when I went home and looked at the sink in the kitchen, I saw the salmon fillets (9 pieces for special packages) and the two opened and dried atka mackerel from the freezer to a strainer and them thawing (by✖ Mom/〇 mischievous Tomi-chan).

・There are about 5 patterns of talking to me, and it’s a mischievous person who repeats it endlessly (That’s ✖ Mom / 〇 mischievous Tomi-chan)..

・A person who skips the process of washing the laundry in the washing machine and hangs it on the clothesline (That’s ✖Mom / 〇 mischievous Tomi-chan).

・Her favorite mandarin orange, she forgot what she just ate and ate it more and more, and she finally finished eating 1 box (3 kg) in 2 days (That’s ✖ Mom / 〇 mischievous Tomi-chan).

・A person who sat down without opening the lid of the toilet seat of the Western-style toilet at home and did her business (That’s ✖Mom / 〇 mischievous Tomi-chan).

・When it’s winter and the sunrise time is late, her morning greeting turn from “Good morning” to “Is it morning now?”  (That’s ✖Mom / 〇 mischievous Tomi-chan).

・On the way back from the day service, at the front door of the house, every time she said to the staff who sent her, “Today is the last day, I will take a break for a while.”,  she shook hands with tears in her eyes, “Thank you for your help” and asked for a business card (That’s ✖ Mom / mischievous Tomi-chan).

・When I finish my housework in the evening and go back to my apartment, I always write down , “I will take the Japanese language teacher’s exam in Kumamoto. I’ll be back at noon tomorrow,”. If I come to the house early the next morning and dispose of the note before she wake up, the day will start without incident (That’s ✖ Mom /〇 mischievous Tomi-chan).

・A person who is proud that she is 95 years old and the longest living in town (That’s ✖Mom / 〇 mischievous Tomi-chan).

　However, thinking about such a thing without permission, there are times when a strong counterattack punch is released to her son who was in a good feeling.

・A person who said to me seriously,  “I’m living a long life and causing trouble for you. I’m sorry…”  (That’s 〇Mom /✖Tomi-chan).

Well, I guess it’s not that easy to escape. I’m sorry.

(〇Mom/〇Tomi-chan)  is still healthy in the future.

Written by Fukui

Translated by Yuko Makino, Masako Amemiya