There's dementia in the family which is part of why I'm concerned about this, but I'm also - to my shame - become impatient with an issue. I'm in the stage where I'm gradually doing more/providing more support to my mother, whom I live near, but its not a caring role yet. Its just helping out with practical things. For context, I have a busy, stressful, but reasonably flexible full time job in academia. Quite often I have time in the morning to do something with/for my mother, but I need to be back at a certain time - I don't have all morning. My mum used to be a good timekeeper, but lately, its like she takes longer and longer to organize herself to actually do anything, and has lost appreciation of the fact that working people have schedules. Sorry if I sound impatient. I try not to show it with her.
The main thing is getting out of the house. Not physically - she's not slow at all, she's very fit for a woman in her 70s. Its what I can only describe has faffing. Putting things down, picking them up, doing one more thing, doing another thing, deciding on a hat, or no hat, it goes on. To be fair, she's always been a little bit like this (when I was a child I assumed that as an adult I'd become party to the secret of why it took adults so long to actually get ready to leave the house, but it turns out that was literally just my parents). But she was never late, and could always keep a schedule. Is this a start of dementia thing? Or just normal ageing?
(Also I think I made a mistake by telling her my work was flexible. It is to a degree, but I still have scheduled calls and meetings. It doesn't mean I can just log on and off whenever I feel like!)