Thanks.
Sorry to hear about your mum NeverGoogle. It is so difficult to see you parents so vulnerable, and other peoples impatience and lack of empathy.
I cant begin to tell you how frustrating it is to cook an elaborate meal, and have to serve 7 people, and at the same time keep your mum away from everybody's plates. Fingering and playing with other peoples cutlery and plates, picking the food out of their plates, and spitting out bones onto other peoples plates. Stirring her fork and knife into all the serving dishes on the table, putting her food back into other serving dishes. In the end all the food was moved off the table, with the result I had to run up and down back and forth for every spoonful of cranberry sauce, sauerkraut, steamed apricots and prunes, a long with cuts of meat (due to where I was sitting and the layout of the table), and wine. While keeping her off my own plate.
We have an eat in kitchen, it was a bit squashed, but decided it would be easier to eat in there, rather than carrying food into the dining room - a corner of the living room, which is generally not in use for other stuff than parking my dads outdoors wheelchair.
Mum was worse than a toddler. And become huffy if somebody said, "please leave my plate alone", or "Please dont dump your stuff on my plate", or "please can I have my plate back." She started to argue, threaten to leave, said nobody loved her, if this was how it was going to be she would never return. etc. She was deeply offended that my 8 year old would not let her feed him food from her plate with her fork/spoon.
The only thing I am grateful for is that she did not soil her nappy, she realized she needed the loo, and we had medical gloves in the house that I could use for wiping her bum.
She refused to move from the dinner table, we just could not get her to come with us into the living room. When we hoped she would follow, she was upset to be left behind. So, we decided to just have coffee and cake straight away at the same table.
Having coffee and cake was equally frustrating as mum decided to play with all the plates on the table, had to try to lick all the spoons, and my kids refused to eat from plates she had played with, and I needed to get fresh ones out. She had to drink from all the glasses, and took my youngest sons drink and poured into the foil from a mince pie, and the rest in to her coffee. Then her coffee tasted horrid and she was offended I had given her terrible coffee.
She still refused to come away from the kitchen to open presents. So we decided to just take her back to the carehome. She was obviously not enjoying herself, and exhausted.
That was another excruciating experience, as she was not cooperating, I kept dressing her, and she got undressed again. She refused to walk down the stairs, just kept saying "bye bye" and laughing like it was me and dh leaving, not her.
Never again. I dont think she is fit to come out for dinner. Not at Christmas. Maybe out for a coffee sometime, but not Christmas dinner.