Ben Bentley looks at how we care for our loved ones when age takes its toll.

Gwendolyn, centre, holds court at the care home, with her daughter Pauline, left, and nurse manager Lin Jay

We go up in the normal lift. The other one, I am told, is larger and can take a coffin.

Upstairs, as I arrive for tea with residents of Lightmoor View care home for people with dementia, residents and their visiting loved ones are clustered around a window watching a glorious sunset over Ironbridge.

With 75 en-suite rooms, modern facilities and walk-in showers, this new £6 million centre specialising in care for people in various stages of dementia is actually more like a hotel than a grim residential home.

There’s even a hairdressing salon where residents can get a trim or a complete re-style to match their mood. A cafe selling skinny lattes adds to the sense of a social whirl.

But it’s still a care home.

Resident Gwendolyn Foden is the girl from number 41. Always has been, always will be. In a show of continuity, she’s been given the room number that graced her front door all her life.

As 83-year-old Gwendolyn is wheeled down the corridor by daughter Pauline her eyes light up as she points at her new front door: the number is one thing she instantly recognises.

Inside, family photographs adorn her walls and dressing table and, picking them up one by one, they can still take her back to when she was young, vital and even attractive.

Pictures

“That’s me, that’s me and Pauline, that’s my mum doing the washing, that’s me flashing my legs,” she says perusing the pictures.

Gwendolyn came into care 12 months ago following a bout of depression which her daughter believes triggered her dementia. She began doing everything in reverse, reading the clock the wrong way round and putting her underclothes on back to front.

Over early evening tea, communication is difficult but there are moments when there’s a devilish glint in Gwendolyn’s eye, such when she looks at me and with a smile says: “Are you a cheeky boy?”

She likes having her hair done does Gwendolyn, and today it’s primped to perfection. “Shampoo and set, and a cut when necessary,” she says as she picks at a ham sandwich cut into triangles.

When I was invited to spend the night in a care home, I must admit I was apprehensive. But why are we so scared of care homes and of old people? Because their wrinkled, disinterested faces are the distorted mirrors of our own futures? That one day we will be them and this is where we’ll end up living our last days?

Perhaps. But with an ageing population, certainly more of us will be saddled with the problems of old age: failing organs, diminished faculties, a general world-weariness and, yes, the disease of the moment – dementia. The number of people living with dementia is expected to rise by a third by 2026, so more of us will live in places like this – homes – to watch the sun go down.

Do we face up to it now, or pretend it’ll never happen?

So, yes, I go in scared. Right now I’m in the prime of my life and happily married with children. I’m not the first to think that care homes are beige coloured pastures at the end of life’s conveyor belt. Or an open prison for people who have done nothing wrong other than get old.

But I’m getting older by the minute and my stay at the care home gets me thinking: perhaps at the wrong end of my life, when I’ve got no-one left to look after me and many of my loved ones have died or I’ve gone senile and have run out of youthful dignity I’ll have a different view.

We can only imagine the thoughts of those residents here who cannot speak for themselves and who have reverted to a child-like state of gurgling and wearing nappies, but it’s hard for the loved ones of residents too of course.

Gwendolyn’s daughter Pauline says: “You grieve every time you lose that part of someone. It’s hard at first when you bring them into a home but you’ve got to learn to let go.

“It’s harder to put you mum in a care home than see a grown up child go off and live on their own.

“When you put your mum or dad into a care home you’ve got to put your trust into other people because they cannot do anything themselves, but you feel relaxed that they are secure.”

Pauline says there’s a family feel to the home. Relatives of other residents have become friends.

Sitting on the next table are resident Bob Smith and his wife Pat. Bob and Pat have always been close, and as he leans towards her for a kiss it’s clear the passing of the years hasn’t weathered their love.

But as Bob, 81, tucks into a slice of Bakewell tart, Pat tells how she started to notice how the first signs of her dear husband’s dementia.

“Forgetting where he’d put his pension book, that was the beginning,” she says. “Then he got lost in Telford town centre.”

Pat comes to see Bob every day. “I never miss a day because I want to be with him,” she says. “I don’t like being in the house on my own. This is like home.”

Pat and Bob have always been close, have always done things together and still do. In the afternoon or early evening they watch TV in his room, as former RAF man Bob says: “I like all television but I’ve got to have it loud. I like animal programmes the best.”

Pat takes Bob out for a walk in his wheelchair to get some fresh air. They have a game of dominoes and do a Word Search.

Trendy

Bob jokes that his new spiky hairdo makes him look trendy and talk turns to one of his passions – music. “Roy Orbison, Elvis, Frankie Laine,” says Bob.

“He used to get up on stage and sing to me,” says Pat, and Bob is excited at the prospect of a forthcoming performance from a singer on the care home circuit.

With an en-suite bathroom and a walk in shower, Bob’s room is like a home from home. “Sometimes he thinks it’s my daughter’s house and people have come to visit him,” says Pat. “He’ll say ‘Are we going home now?’ That’s what gets me.”

Bob watches some more of his animal programmes in the shared lounge before bedtime. Residents fall asleep in their chairs and are helped off to bed or dressed in their pyjamas ready. It’s all cheerfully overseen by singing nurse Malcolm, who, as he goes about his work, does a mean Kris Kristofferson with his rendition of Help Me Make It Through The Night.

It’s time for Pat to go home, and she gathers up Bob’s dirty washing and pops it in a bag.

Pat gives Bob a kiss and tells him a fib. “I’ve got to go now, love, but I’ll be back later. And if you’re asleep, I’ll just get into bed beside you quietly.

“God bless you.”

With Pat and the visitors gone, an hour or so later at around 10pm the wing is quiet and the care staff work through the night, checking on residents and doing their chores.

The next morning at breakfast, Dawley girl Hazel Mallard, 90, is sitting and supping her first cup of tea of the day while gazing out of the window.

Despite her sunshine smile, Hazel, clutching a teddy bear, can’t hide her feeling of loneliness. “I’ve only got my brother and sister-in-law and they don’t come very often. I get very lonely. There are people here, but not family. It’s awful when you get put somewhere you don’t want to go, but anyway . . . I’ve got to be satisfied with small mercies.

“Do I have any friends? Not really. We speak to each other, but not really.”

She continues: “I’m indifferent (to being in here) but I take what comes. I wish I was in my own home. There’s no place like home.”

Cradling her mug of tea, she sings me a song.

“A nice cup of tea in the morning to start the day. . . a nice cup of tea for my tea. . . and when it’s time for bed, there’s nothing to be said, but a nice cup of tea,” sings Hazel.

“One of the stars used to sing it on television – I can’t remember who it was.”