Waking up his mother, cleaning her, dressing her, combing her hair, preparing breakfast for her, sitting her in the wheelchair, and taking her down to the bus stop that picks her up to take her to Las Cabreras. All these steps, carried out with the affection that only two kinds of people receive: children, and the elderly whose gaze has become childlike.
"My mother couldn't come to the center five days because it's exhausting for her, we are very happy that she comes two days, but the rest of the days we have to take care of her. She has a very big dementia and she can't do anything alone, so I don't work to be able to take care of her, that's why I ask them to give me some money, because we can't do everything", says one of these women whose name she prefers to keep secret.
"You have to make her food, shower her, give her cream, put on her diaper, organize the house... and the administration doesn't help us at all. They give us some diapers and little else, and only the money I spend on cream so that she doesn't get sores is already a significant amount," says another woman whose mother also goes to the center. In her case, she takes her mother to Las Cabreras five days a week, weekend included, depending on the respite program, to be able to enjoy her family life on holidays. Something that she barely remembers because her mother "requires all the attention".
These rituals are the ones that most of the children whose parents go to Las Cabreras repeat. There are those who go to the center, two days, others three, others up to seven, but what they all have in common is that at five in the afternoon they have their dependent parents at home and they will stay with them until the next day. During all those hours, at least one person has to dedicate themselves entirely to the elderly, with the physical and mental exhaustion that this entails.
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