Month: March 2022

Returning to and being able to volunteer at the nursing home with all the different rules and regulations plus restrictions due to ’you know what’ has reminded me how different life in a nursing home was for my aunt in 2009

(At that time I belonged to a (now defunct) ’families and carers’ group where to ease the strain we wrote and shared pieces online – I hope you don’t mind me sharing this one here)

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Aunty Pam’s Last Dance

I haven’t said much about my Aunt recently

As even tho’ she has been in the nursing home for a few months now

she is still very unsettled and almost withdrawn

I am grateful for the loving care she is receiving

yet feel there has to more that I can give

I visit when I can and if its dry outside

I take her for walks in the wheelchair along the main road

She can look at the traffic and also in peoples gardens

We ‘talk’ about the flowers and the cars

I try to get her to tell me the names of the plants and describe them

– colours and shape –

but her memory is really going and she just gets flustered

Unfortunately over the past month or two

she has become so uncoordinated

 I find it difficult to transfer her into the car

so going for  a ride is now a thing of the past

Even tho’ the wheelchair taxi is very unreliable

– they come when it suits –

when the weather is better

 my cousin and I hope to manage to take her out

 maybe for lunch at one of the larger shopping centres

There is one close by with some nice little cafes

we can walk round

and she can look in the shop windows

Also if there are the two of us there to entertain her

it won’t be such a problem if we do have to wait

for the taxi to come for the return journey

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Last night I took Aunty Pam to a dance

Yes, a dance……at the  Nursing Home

The staff organised an evening for the residents

They asked for some nice clothes to be there for the evening

Ladies had long lasting hairdo’s (I think the rollers stayed in for hours lol)

Nails done, make up on and off we went

Down to the largest day room

– renamed The Ballroom for the night –

decorated beautifully with fairy lights and balloons

Carers who weren’t on duty came in and helped out

Carers who were on duty kept popping in to see what was going on

It was only the really infirm who were in their rooms

and one carer stayed on the floor all the time

We listened to a Glenn Miller tribute band

And we danced

Wheelchairs were wheeled round in time to the music

Those who could were on their feet

– some gently swaying – some remembering steps from long ago –

others having a fine old time humming and mouthing words to old favourites

Lots of family and friends there

young and old

There was wine and beer and soft drinks

There was finger food and cakes and pastries

and at the end of the night

This lady who has been so unhappy

went to bed with a smile on her face

And ‘this’ lady

who has also been so upset

‘cose the other lady has been so upset

drove home with tears in her eyes

‘cose the other lady was so happy 😊

This is The Golfer with his aunt (his mother’s sister)
Taken 2010 in Nova Scotia at the wake after a funeral 

She was smiling not tearful at all – ‘no place to be sad, she said 
Always remember and celebrate the life of the one who has gone 
It doesn’t matter how long a life they lived – Its how they lived it that matters’

She is the one who left her life in England back in 1945
to move to Canada as a war bride 

And it’s their family I’ve been doing more research on over the past few weeks 

Its been fun doing this and there have been some good moments when things have fallen into place and then some not so good moments when there have been big surprises.

The biggest surprise was when I actually located Aunt Dot’s long lost aunt’s name on a passenger list of a ship going to Canada in 1902 but the circumstances were not good.

At the turn of the 20th century there was a lot of poverty in England and it seems her father (recently widowed) placed her – the youngest child – into the care of the Waifs and Strays Society.  What happened then also happened to so many other children at that time – she (aged 12) was taken to Canada seemingly for a better chance in life. It appears she went to an intitution in Niagara on the Lake but I can’t locate any records of where she went after that.

• Earlier this century, several thousand British children mainly in the care of voluntary organisations were emigrated to former Dominions – mainly Australia, Canada and New Zealand – under several schemes involving the British Government, the Governments of the receiving countries and the voluntary organisations who operated the schemes. Source
  

• Between 1869 and 1932, over 100,000 children were sent from Britain to Canada through assisted juvenile emigration. These migrants are called “home children” because most went from an emigration agency’s home for children in Britain to its Canadian receiving home.  source

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I had been aware that lots of children had been brought to Australia particularly after WW2 (so the ‘Oranges and Sunshine’ debacle wasn’t quite a shock to me as to others) …..as an aside there was an orphanage close to where we lived in the 1940/50s and my mother (lovely lady that she was☹️) would ’tell me’ that if I didn’t behave she’d have me sent to Australia along with the kids from the home!

But… I certainly didn’t know the ‘scheme’ had been going on for so long and the children had been going to other countries as well .
Looks like I’m going to be sitting here for quite a lot longer than I thought if I want to get to the bottom of Ada’s tale. I just don’t know what I’ll discover next.