Carers

“You will have done this again the next morning and twice more by the weekend. It was the single largest day of my whole life and you treated it like one.”

“You do the jobs nobody talks about and you have never made any of it awkward. You keep my dignity entirely intact on the days I cannot do it myself.”

“I had read everything and planned all of it and none of that survived the first hour. You changed the plan without once making me feel like something had gone wrong.”

“You learned which chair she likes and which program she watches and what she takes in it. None of that is in any job description. You went and learned it all anyway.”

“You look after my mother on the days I cannot get there, and there are many. You do it the way I would want it done, which is not anything I could teach you.”

“You came back in at the end of a long shift to check on something nobody had asked about. I was awake. I saw you do it, and I have thought about it a great deal since.”

“I was frightened and trying very hard not to let anybody in there see it. You talked to me about nothing in particular until the whole thing passed.”

“I had no idea at all what I was doing and you had plainly done it a thousand times. You never once made me feel like the thousandth one. You stayed in the room.”

“The day was busy and the ward was full and you still never once rushed me. You explained it all twice without being asked, and you did it very kindly.”