On 10 October 2021 I posted:
The wee wild strawberries have a few more stems.
I don’t see Mum so often any more, but have a quick phone call with her most days… initially I found the calls stressy but actually now they are fine. Mum isn’t always terribly communicative, but is always so pleased that I called; and even more pleased if I tell her I’m coming to see her the next day.
I saw her this weekend. We hadn’t read her memoirs to her since she moved into the home. They had been such a comfort to her while she was in hospital, and also such a crutch to us, in that we could visit her and read them out loud when we had little else to say.
Yesterday I started reading them to her right at the beginning again .. as I read the familiar opening words, “I was born on …” she gently closed her eyes. She was like a sunbather, bathing in the glow of the stories. Her stories, her words.
We didn’t get far, just her first years in South Africa before she came back to Scotland when war broke out. There’s a chapter about employees on the farm, and then a much longer chapter about the various animals, starting with the cats which she taught to do tricks, inspiring her to want to be a lion tamer when she grew up. And the guinea pigs that came to an unpleasant end. Many horses, including her naughty pony, Tiny, who would stop at a puddle, then paw at it with his hooves, before lying down and rolling in it… mum got very good at jumping off Tiny when approaching puddles.
And there were 4 pigs, including one that ‘someone had won as a piglet in a raffle’! I want more piglet raffles in my life!
Anyway, talking of pigs… I did some more tidying and clearing in mum’s house, and decided that it was probably sensible to empty her salt pig, which has sat beside the Rayburn all my life. I think she got it as a wedding present, and I expect it’s never been empty since then. So much salt! So many meals. So much love. It may be empty for now, but it feels like a bottle with a genie snoozing in it to me.
Bonus pic = the salt pig.
Two things to say as I sit here two years on from that original post.
Thing One – that salt pig will be filled up with salt again this weekend. It was always just the salt pig, and was just there, like old wallpaper. But forever in my future, I will remember that day, pouring the salt down the sink, washed down with big catch-your-breath-sobs. Always, there will be the muscle memory of those tears, of that moment as I knew my mother wasn’t coming home.
Thing Two – reflecting on ‘Mum not being terribly communicative’ I remember that I was still occasionally phoning her at this point, not every evening, tho most of them. She had lost the ability to contribute something new to the conversation, but could still respond, and talk in full sentences. There might be some sentences that were difficult to unravel, or which seemed to be based on something which probably hadn’t just happened, but that mattered not to me. If she wanted to tell me about a long dead relative or King Haakon coming for tea, then I wanted to hear about it. But her communication has deteriorated so much now – for a while she could still say words, but found it hard to create sentences; we would get odd phrases, and some short statements that seemed not to fit with anything else around us. On my latest visit, her words were increasingly slurred, so each word is now difficult to interpret. And sometimes a single slurred word will hang in the air, and before she finds the next one it has all gone. But she was wide awake throughout this visit, and listened as I told her about our forthcoming move, about my trip to London, about being a finalist for an award… and then back around again to our forthcoming move, back to Gatehouse. I said ‘It will be so lovely. To be nearer you’. She looked at me with her watery grey-green eyes, and slowly, with a long pause between each slurred word said, ‘You are so lovely’.
Yup, she breaks my heart every time.
***
Thank you for reading this.
If you want to read more about my relationship with Mum and her dementia, then you could start here at Taking smock of the Situation. Or just dip in. After all, if I’ve learned anything this last few years it’s that chronology and time are less important than we might believe.
Finally, if it’s not too much to ask (I know, it is, apologies) I would really appreciate it if you could make a donation towards Alzheimer Scotland. They’re doing stuff that makes living with this more bearable for so many people. Thank you, thank you, a thousand thank yous.
Shewolfinthevalley 
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