Olive calling!

The Brentwood group of Contact the Elderly started in October 2008 with our first tea party to which I had been invited. With some trepidation I arrived with five other new members who were so friendly encouraged by the `army` of volunteers who waited on us and immediately put us at ease. Jane our hostess had provided such a sumptuous buffet most of us wished we had not had any lunch but after a relaxing afternoon chatting and making new friends we were all given a doggy bag and driven home by a volunteer.

We meet one Sunday a month at various hostesses houses each being collected from and being returned home. I am 86 years old and now live alone, my son and daughter living many miles from me and at that time as my husband was in a Nursing Home I found myself looking forward to our monthly Tea Party.

In mid February whilst I was very ill myself, my husband was admitted to hospital not expected to live although he did linger on for three months before dying in mid June. I am partially handicapped myself so needed a wheelchair to enable me to visit him. As soon as my situation became known to our group, Jane,our organiser, drew up a list of volunteer drivers to take me to hospital some 15 miles away. Between about six of them they took me to the hospital every day that my family were unable to do so, not only having to hump my wheelchair into their car but once there each one undertook to feed my husband and give him the fluid he needed as they soon realised that I was unable to stand long enough to help him.

They did this until he was discharged to a Nursing Home nearer where I live even though they themselves do not live near me. Without their help I could not have seen my husband much during the last weeks of his life.

I feel so privileged to have been invited to join this group of Contact the Elderly and know that they will always be there with their kindness and help in the future.

Olive


For more information about Contact the Elderly please visit http://www.contact-the-elderly.org.uk/