In this excerpt from Madly, Deeply: the diaries of Alan Rickman, ©2023, he discusses putting his mother in a nursing home:
7 September 1994
Taking my mother from a house stuffed with collected bits of furniture, pieces of paper, magazines, old biros (ballpoint pens) neatly lined up with emery boards and a teaspoon-- off to Chartwell House; purpose built for the elderly genteel. It's all on one level and the staff are terrific. It keeps me reassured and guilty-- a rare combination. We'll see.
8 September 1994
Most of the day spent at Chartwell House. My life is in such clear-cut strands at the moment. Career, Architect, Subsidence, Other People's Careers, Relationships. Seemingly in that order. Today was almost exclusively about my mother. Just spending time in this new environment, calling the doctor, testing her hearing, wrapping her up and taking her and her wheelchair for a walk to get the prescription, looking on helplessly at today's pain and her fury at it. I don't know what I become under these circumstances-- a kind of amorphous bundle of past and present. I have to kick myself towards the phone to attend to some of the other members of the above list. The strands. Later Eileen [A.R.'s cousin] and boyfriend and 2 daughters come by. Some of my childhood, cousins, aunts & uncles, swim before me. Then Rima arrives and reduces me to silence for the rest of the evening. Is this control, depression or exhaustion?
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