Tag Archives: family

Anticipation

22 Aug

I have swithered about whether or not to share this post, which I drafted in January, a week or so before Mum died. I’m glad to have captured that moment, now over 6 months ago, when I felt certain that Mum was in her final days with us. I was with her as she took her final breath, and it could not have been more peaceful, more ordinary in many ways. As ever, Mum showed us how it could be done.

You expect anticipation to lead to something good, something exciting, something that might enrich your soul. Otherwise you’d call it dread wouldn’t you?

I’ve written before of anticipatory grief. Of how each and every day for a long time I felt I was already grieving for the mother who was still physically there, but there were bits of her that no-one had access to any more, least of all Mum herself. But layered on top of this chronic grief was the anticipation of the big one, the true grief if you like, the grief of her last breath, and the finality of never seeing her again, never hearing her voice, never feeling the touch of her hand.

For over four years now I have dreaded that moment. And I still do.

But in some ways I am already there. I have not heard Mum’s voice for some while. Most recently there have been no words, no flicker of recognition that someone has entered her room, no response when I thank her for inviting me, introducing myself and telling her how lovely it is to see her again. And no reaction when I lean forward and kiss her forehead, or stroke her hair gently. But for months before this version of Mum appeared, the words have been few and far between, like the last leaves on a tree in a mild winter, ready to be blown away but just hanging in there. When she has tried to speak, her words were always jumbled, often slightly slurred; I yearned to hear her strong, confident voice again.

And Mum has not touched me for a long time. Over the last year she has curled herself up, almost foetus-like, but with her arms decidedly crossed over her chest and a duvet tucked up to her chin. There has been no hand available to hold.

And as she has become less communicative, less aware of my presence, I have visited her less. I recall a time, in the first months of us realising she had a dementia when I could not conceive of a day when I would be able to visit Mum, but would actively choose not to do it. In those early months, Covid restrictions were still in full force, and weeks would go by when I didn’t see her at all, while my brother was with her. And then we would swap and I’d spend weeks with her (and no-one else). Those weeks with her were hard, but being away from her was much harder for me. And yet there have been many of those days now. I can’t explain it, except to say that moving on is part of this grief and that I needed to give some attention to my life, to my new life in our new home with the Captain by my side. I needed to focus a bit more on my own self care, not just to fit it in where I could, but really to prioritise it.

We have had Christmasses without Mum now, so perhaps it will be easier than I imagine when she actually dies. Perhaps after the first emotional upheaval, I will manage to move on relatively quickly and to live a life which doesn’t always ask ‘what would Mum say?’. Perhaps.

But then we move on to anticipatory drugs. Another euphemism, and one that I feel very uncomfortable using. I first heard of anticipatory drugs a couple of years ago, on an occasion when I was called into the Nurse’s office at Mum’s care home and told that she had stopped eating. We discussed what this meant for a frail bed-bound woman in her 90s with relatively advanced dementia, and it was made clear to me that we were looking at a steady decline, over a period of possibly 2 or 3 weeks, followed by her death. Anticipatory Drugs could be ordered now, in anticipation of her needing them. It transpires that the Anticipatory Drugs are ones that would make Mum’s transition from life to not-life more peaceful, and pain free. A day later Mum started eating again. The drugs were not required on this occasion.

I never have really understood if they are called Anticipatory Drugs, because they are brought in, in anticipation of them being needed. Or of they are anticipating the end of life.

There have been two other occasions when we have been called in to be told that it seems like the end is near for Mum.

On each occasion, I have been overwhelmed with sadness, with gut-wrenching, heart-breaking grief. The idea that Mum might no longer exist in any form has always seemed impossible. And given that she keeps defying these near-death experiences, I have been proved right so far. It is impossible for there to be a world without Mum in it.

And then on Saturday, when I was with Mum the nurse on duty came in and shut the door behind her, to have a word with me. There was concern that Mum’s condition had changed – and that she was in some pain. The carers had noticed this when they were moving her body in the bed just before I visited. And yes, I had been concerned that she was moaning a bit, and that she would screw up her face into a grimace every so often. She did not seem the peaceful, serene Mum that I had been used to visiting. Her eyes were flickering and rolling to the back of her head, and she had a bit of a cough.

We had a long discussion. I felt strongly that if Mum was in pain, that we should do something to relieve it. Anticipatory drugs were discussed. Mum is very weak and frail, and is unable to communicate with us any more. I am her Power of Attorney for Welfare matters, and having talked to the nurse as Lois, the daughter, thinking about what I wanted for my mother, I came to the realisation that actually what I wanted was less important than being able to relay what I believe Mum would want.

This gave me utter clarity.

Mum has a high pain threshold, but this may have been short circuited with her dementia (we will never know). However, after years of living relatively pain free (and certainly over the last 2 years this has been the case) she would not wish to be in pain as she leaves this world. She also would not wish for her life to be prolonged in any way. She has had morphine in the past in hospital, and said she loved it – it gave her such good dreams. So I feel very confident that if Mum could communicate to the Nurse, she would say, “Give me the morphine. Give me the Anticipatory Drugs.”.

The plan was to call the out of hours GP to move this forward.

I got a call at around 7pm to say the out of hours GP had confirmed that Mum could get the anticipatory drugs, and that they would be delivered by the District Nurse some time during the night. I was reassured that if Mum needed them more urgently, they had an alternative way forward, but I didn’t ask the details.

I visited Mum the next afternoon, hoping that she would be less agitated. But Mum had had ‘a good night’ and had eaten all her porridge for breakfast so no drugs had been administered. They had arrived at 2.30am though, so were now available should Mum need them.

Mum was clearly still in some pain. Perhaps not constant, and not acute, but in some pain. It was distressing to see her like this; so I had another discussion with the nurse. She came and assessed mum, and agreed with me that Mum was in some pain, which could be relieved with morphine. She checked in with me several times to make sure this was what I wanted as Mum’s Power of Attorney, but also as Mum’s daughter – and that my brothers were also happy with this decision. We were all in agreement.

Mum was given the lowest dose of morphine, sub cutaneously. I popped back to see her a couple of hours later and she was sleeping so peacefully, she looked so blissful.

That was Sunday evening. After a good nights’ sleep Mum had rallied a bit – her pallor had changed again, looked slightly more healthy, and she had eaten 200g of porridge for breakfast. When I visited I was told that because she was eating, there was no more morphine for her. A GP arrived. Perhaps the pain over the weekend had been trapped wind? (I do not believe that this was the cause). After some discussion, and further assessment, it was clear that Mum was calm, and not displaying that she was in pain. So the GP did not recommend further use of the anticipatory drugs – but if Mum needed pain relief she should be given liquid paracetamol 3 times a day with her food. Mum does not always eat, and often stores her morsels of food in her cheeks, forgetting to swallow it down.

On Tuesday I visited again and found Mum mostly peaceful, but screwing up her face in a grimace every 3 or 4 minutes – in my opinion she was experiencing pain again. The same nurse listened to me (again) and agreed with me and also agreed what could and probably should be done, but while Mum is eating it seems unlikely that they will allow her to have the anticipatory drugs. Once morphine is administered, the appetite decreases. Mum is frail, she would not last long. But she would be pain free. And released from this life which she no longer enjoys, she just endures.

Tomorrow I will go and talk to the home again and try to establish what is going on, and why Mum is now expected to endure pain in what must surely be her final days or weeks of life.

***

Thank you for reading this.

Mostly I blog about my relationship with Mum and her dementia, so if that might be your thing, 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.

Do get in touch if you have any questions or comments – I love to hear from you my lovely readers.

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Loss. But not lost.

8 Aug

I wrote this post back in March. For some reason I never posted it at the time. I have not edited it, but have added an extra paragraph at the end as a wee update.

Visiting Mum in February 2023

I’ve been thinking about loss a lot lately. I guess this isn’t much of a surprise to anyone.

Mum died 51 days ago, and I still feel her loss as though it were a large woollen jumper I put on each morning. It wraps me up and keeps me safe. It smells and feels familiar. Its softness fits my contours. It is light and some of the time I hardly notice I am wearing it. But occasionally it overwhelms me and feels like it is suffocating me.

But there have been other losses.

Sometime around 26th January I lost my house keys. It has been fairly common over the last year for me to temporarily lose my keys, but usually I find them in the bottom of a shopping bag, or in the drawer, or hanging up in the kitchen. On this occasion they were nowhere to be found. I was annoyed at myself for stupidly losing them, but honestly had other things that were more important at that point.

Mum died three days later. The keys didn’t show up.

This loss, which should have thrown me into panic, into a tizz, hardly touched me. Mostly I don’t need my set of house keys, as I’m either with The Captain (and his set of keys) or he is at home and we don’t need to lock the house up. In my head I tried to retrace my steps when I last used my keys – I thought I had them with me when I’d gone shopping, or perhaps that time I bought a coffee on the way to visit Mum?

A few weeks later I made enquiries at the few places I might have left my keys – they looked for me, but nothing had been handed in. Had I just dropped them in the street? Did I need house keys at all? I sort of felt like I probably did. But this loss indicated that perhaps they weren’t as important in my life as I had imagined.

The loss of my keys seemed to be part of a greater loss I’ve experienced over the last long year. I have lost some of my eyesight, aspects of my health and with these two, my independence. As I write this I realise it sounds more dramatic than it is – I am still an independent woman, but I am no longer able to drive and somehow the ability to get in a car and drive off somewhere on my own has always represented independence to me. Perhaps I have to look again at what independence really looks like?

Mostly I have just absorbed this loss. I railed against it initially, was desperately unhappy and, looking back, was really quite incapacitated by it. I felt let down by the medical profession – there has been little research for my condition, and as a result there are few options. The medication I need to take (to prevent further sight loss) adds new symptoms on top of the recognised symptoms of my condition.

And this brings me back to the loss of Mum. Except that I haven’t really lost her. Here she is, in this big woollen jumper, always with me. I see her everyday. She is in the camellia flowers, which have appeared so early in the Spring. She is in every meal that I make, but most especially in big pots of soup. She is under the stairs, in those ancient jars of salt petre and bottles of glycerine. She is in the jade elephant. And there she is in the birds twittering around the birdfeeder. She is in my wedding ring, given to her by Dad nearly 64 years ago when they married. She is here all around me, in the view of the pond which is so full of activity at this time of year – swans, ducks, coots, moorhens. She is with me when I sow seeds, with such hope for their growth. She is in every breath I take, for I am made from her.

One day a month or two later The Captain walked into my office saying, ‘Guess what I found?’. My housekeys had re-appeared, after a long holiday in the car way under the passenger seat. I have put them in my bag, but have not used them once since. There are some things which you believe are essential to life itself, and it’s only when they are gone that you realise they’re not. Mum was though.

Mum, my cousin Max and I finding something very funny a few years ago

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Another perspective

5 Dec

On 17 November 2021 I wrote:

There are other ways of looking at things.

Ah, three years on from first writing this, I feel I have learned of so many other perspectives, in so many aspects of my life!

In June this year we got married. We’d been together for 16 or 17 years, we’re actually not entirely sure which, and I think that’s a good thing. It’s not that we don’t care, or that we don’t want to celebrate that we are together, but it’s a recognition that we should appreciate one another every day, not just because it coincides with the anniversary of the date we first met one another.

New recipe instructions were required

We married for practical reasons. I had never really seen the point of getting married, hadn’t been someone who had hankered after a glorious wedding and being a fabulous bride (or a bridezilla). And I think that suited The Captain just fine. He’d been married before and was perhaps wary of repeats. Or perhaps we both just never felt we needed to.

Mum had always wanted us to marry. She knew The Captain was a keeper from early on, and occasionally would needle me to consider marrying him. She felt it would ‘protect me’. I, of course, thought I knew better, and was confident that I could look after myself. I felt slightly indignant and defiant of the idea that I should require protection.

But the years rolled on, and life threw curve balls at us. And we came to realise that marriage might be a sensible thing after all. The driver for me was as un-romantic as it gets – I wanted to be sure that if I were on life support, or incapacitated in such a way that someone else was being asked to make medical decisions about me, then I wanted that person to be The Captain. And the simplest route to getting that might be marriage.

I was immensely proud of the bouquet and buttonholes that I made from bits and pieces in Mum’s garden and from the hedgerow beyond.

So I hadn’t expected anything to be different on the day after I transitioned from bidie-in to wee wifey.

But there are other ways of looking at things. And looking at our life from the perspective of being married, we are much closer, more confident, somehow more of a couple. And that seems a bizarre thing to write, as I hadn’t thought we were lacking in any of those areas before. Perhaps the wedding was also a recognition that we had positively and definitely chosen one another, rather than that sense that trying to start again with someone else would just be too much effort.

So, I raise a glass to all who have chosen a path in life that suits them, that gives them the perspective they want. Keep the joy folks.

***

Thank you for reading this.

Mostly I blog about my relationship with Mum and her dementia, so if that might be your thing, 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.

Do get in touch if you have any questions or comments – I love to hear from you my lovely readers.

And FINALLY… it’s not too late to make the delicious Light Christmas Cake. Really it’s a cake for all seasons. You can find the recipe here.

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Feeling my way

15 Nov

On 16 November 2021 I wrote:

Slow but steady progress. At this stage I’m still sort of feeling my way and working out how I’ll do each element of the design.

On Sunday when I talked to Mum she hadn’t realised it was Remembrance Sunday, she said they hadn’t done anything at the home (but she’s not the most reliable witness). When I asked if she was wearing a poppy she just didn’t understand why I was asking her, she couldn’t connect poppies to Remembrance Day.

Dementia is so strange, how it robs people of their memories, of their ability to communicate, of whole parts of their lives, their personalities.

But at another level there is still so much of Mum there, and so much to love. So I try to accept her and love her for who she is each day, and remind her that she is loved, so very loved.

I can’t focus just now on who she was, what is gone already. There will be plenty time for that.

It’s odd coming back to this, three years later; and many months after I last wrote about Mum and her dementia.

So, three years on, Mum has all but disappeared. Certainly it is now almost impossible to see the woman who brought up three kids, who was Provost of our town, who campaigned tirelessly for this local community, who could draw anything, who welcomed so many people into her life, who was so interested in other people, and who could inspire a room full of people when she spoke. Mum used to lay a wreath on behalf of the town council at the War Memorial. And now….

These days, sometimes she wakes when I visit her, and she occasionally smiles at whatever I am knitting, and very, very occasionally says a few words. She may or may not know who I am, but I think she is aware that I am someone who loves her. And if not, then I tell her. I tell her over and over again. For she will forget as soon as I say a thing, that has been her life for several years now.

It was the Remembrance Day Service on Sunday, at the War Memorial which is just a few yards from our home. The day was drizzly but not too cold. So, having thought about wearing Mum’s Karakul fur coat (which she used to wear only to the Remembrance Day Parade and to funerals in the cold winter) I decided against it. I’m guessing that damp Karakul would not be the nicest thing, though perhaps our dogs would love it. I have wondered if perhaps I should dispose of the coat… but since it probably belonged to my great grandmother so no animals died for it in my lifetime, I think perhaps it would be ok to wear it, as Mum did, at funeral and Remembrance Day services when it is so cold you can’t feel your fingers.

At the end of the service on Sunday, when the wreaths had all been laid, we’d had Flowers of the Forest on the bagpipes, and the Last Post on the trumpet; the colours had been raised again, the Minister spoke, ending with ‘WE WILL REMEMBER THEM’. At that precise moment we all heard a ‘whup whup whup’ noise above us, coming up from the High Street. It was one of the swans, giving us a perfectly timed fly past, Gatehouse-style.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: 

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. 

We will remember them.

***

Thank you for reading this.

Mostly I blog about my relationship with Mum and her dementia, so if that might be your thing, 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.

Do get in touch if you have any questions or comments – I love to hear from you my lovely readers.

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Boostered

27 May

On 14 November 2021 I also wrote:

This is what a freshly boostered Loïs looks like.

I look at this photo of me now and marvel at that woman, staring back at me.

I think she thought that better times were ahead, although even with the Covid vaccine boosters, Mum was going to die at some point, her health was going to continue to deteriorate, we were going to continue to lose a bit of her each day, each week, each month. But how long could we go on losing bits of her and for her still to be there? It seemed inconceivable that much more could disappear without it taking all of her with it.

And yet here I am, in June 2024, and Mum is still here. Or there. She still IS anyway. Today she told me that no she is not sad (in response to my question); and then she told me that when she goes out… (long pause here for dramatic effect) …. she always puts a jacket on.

So there we have it, today’s advice is if you’re going out, put a jacket on.

And now, again, I look at that photo of me. I try to detect if there are any signs of what was to come, of me losing lumps of vision in one eye because I have increased pressure on the fluid in my brain? And no, I don’t think there was any indication of it then, I don’t think it had started then, I had no symptoms associated with it.

I miss Mum horribly at the moment, feel her loss so keenly every day again, after some weeks when I hardly thought of her. I have been busier than usual at work, and have found it difficult to find time to focus on anything much else; I haven’t visited her for 2 weeks. In all honesty, I found the visits too hard for a while, so although I saw her, I found no solace in the visit, not even to think that perhaps Mum had some small benefit from seeing me, because it had felt like she hadn’t (she didn’t even know I was there on several occasions). But somehow we seem to have slipped into a new rhythm again, and I was greeted with the warmest of smiles from her again today. And as I left, telling her I’d be back soon, and ‘lots of love’, she repeated back to me several times, ‘lots of love’ without once opening her eyes.

Dear, sweet Mum, I love her so, and just wish we could sit at the dining room table over a cup of coffee again, and have a conversation. Any conversation.

And one day, I will start to remember her again as she was for all those years, rather than as she is now.

***

Thank you for reading this.

Mostly I blog about my relationship with Mum and her dementia, so if that might be your thing, 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.

Do get in touch if you have any questions or comments – I love to hear from you my lovely readers.

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Remembering Remembrance

14 Apr

On 14 November 2021 I wrote:

On Remembrance Sunday I used to take part in the parade at home, attending the church service and then marching up to the memorial.

When I first lived in London I went to the Cenotaph most years, I felt lost if I didn’t mark this day somehow, it’s in my blood. Back in the 80s there were far fewer people at the Cenotaph and most years I would stand just yards away from the royal party. I wasn’t there for them though, it was about family, about tradition, about giving gratitude to those who made such sacrifices.

This year I’m at home and watched the parade on telly, thinking mostly about some of Mum’s stories of the war… when she and Jen lay in the field in Hampshire, looking up at the planes (that was the Battle of Britain), of the time she was at boarding school in Helensburgh and her father’s ship dropped anchor and he came to pick her up. The headmistress was quite in a tizz at this handsome man in naval uniform evidently.

But mostly I think of memories themselves… mum is losing so many of hers and I feel a need to hold on to them, not to let anything go. So today I’ll start stitching this geranium which sits in her conservatory. I love the smell of geraniums.. we always had a couple of enormous fragranced ones in the porch at Fleet Street. And that smell is the smell of a happy childhood, of coming home.

No bonus pics today, but come back later and I might post some of my ancestors in uniform.

The geranium is all stitched now, and I love how it climbs up over the pocket of the smock. The actual geranium is gone. We managed to keep it alive for a year or so after Mum went into the care home… but had left it in her conservatory and through the winter it lost its will to live and that was that.

Mum was rarely sentimental about plants, or anything really. So she would have been quite ok about it being thrown out and making space for something new. I’m less good at this, and still live surrounded by too many things which should have been thrown out years ago, or at least months ago.

I’m sure I will write more another time about the table cloth and crockery that was only used on special occasions. And in all honesty special occasions really just meant Christmas and Hogmanay. And to this day I quite enjoy polishing silver, feeling that same frisson of excitement that we had as we presented our best selves over the Christmas season. Gleamy silver, shiny glassware and all our eyes glittering with excitement, reflecting the lights on the Christmas tree.

And yes, I still have most of the Christmas decorations too. Of course.

***

Thank you for reading this.

Mostly I blog about my relationship with Mum and her dementia, so if that might be your thing, 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.

Do get in touch if you have any questions or comments – I love to hear from you my lovely readers.

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Here we go again…

26 Dec

I’ve been absent from here for a while. I just couldn’t write, nothing would come. My brain was frazzled and my fingers just sat limply on the keyboard, not knowing what to do, whereas usually I can’t quite keep up with them.

But mostly I didn’t even have time to sit at the keyboard and search for words, mostly I was packing and organising and throwing things out and not throwing enough things out and filling boxes, and taping up boxes and labelling boxes and then not labelling boxes and then carrying boxes, and more boxes. Then a bit of unpacking of some boxes. And then more packing and not labelling and carrying.

Basically we have not been very good at this house move thing. There have been some mitigating circumstances, which I won’t go into here, but suffice to say that it’s been something of a rollercoaster, not knowing from one week to the next if the house move would be on. or if it was, exactly when it would be. And then there were the weeks when it felt like becoming homeless could be a real possibility.

But here we are now, the day after another Christmas Day, and finally having time to reflect on things.

I visited mum yesterday. I walked along that brightly lit corridor, turned right and then saw that her door, the first one on the left was closed. This usually means that carers are in with her, so I gently knocked, but on getting no reply opened the door a fraction anyway.

The bed was empty, made but empty. And there was a gift bag on the end of it, with her room number written in wee letters at the top. A present from the home no doubt, to make sure all residents get something to open on Christmas Day. I had brought Mum nothing. And I feel no guilt, no shame about that, just a tinge of sadness, remembering how she would clap her hands with joy when opening something she loved. And recognising that this is something I do instinctively, have never realised it is Mum’s trait too. But nowadays, there would be no joy in receiving a gift, no clapping of those hands which mostly remain curled up under her blankets.

There were no staff about to ask, but I reckoned they had got Mum dressed and into her chair, to wheel her along to the dining room for a Christmas lunch. It was now a couple of hours after lunch would have finished. I walked back along the empty brightly lit corridor, and turned left at the end, towards the dining room. The doors were wide open, and the dining tables were mostly pushed aside. Set out in a semi circle in front of the most enormous television were four elderly women in wheelchairs, none of them paying much attention to the television, though not exactly asleep. Apart from Mum. There she was at the end of the semi circle, in her great big padded armchair on wheels, asleep, slightly off-kilter in her chair, leaning off to one side. I stroked her hair and kissed her head, called “Hello Mum” to her.. and before I had a chance to say “It’s Loïs” she opened her eyes and smiled her big gap-toothed smile, and slurred “L O I S”. I told her everyone was sending their love, and named her closest family. There was little recognition with this string of words, names of her most loved, now mostly not remembered.

Matthew Bourne’s Sleeping Beauty continued noisily in my background, the other residents stared into the middle distance. This did not feel like dignity, did not feel like a Christmas wish for anyone. But it’s reality. And Mum is comfortable, and generally peaceful and serene.

I told Mum that I was going home to make supper, but that tomorrow I’d come back and bring some homemade biscuits. She perked up at that, and managed to slur what sounded like “That’s my best thing to look forward to”. I left, telling her I love her, blowing her kisses. But she was already asleep again.

Today she was back snuggled up in bed when I got there, with my home made biscuits for her. She opened her eyes when I stroked her hair… but then gently closed them again and was back sleeping almost immediately. The sun was streaming into her room, creating tiny dancing rainbows as it caught the light of the crystal, a gift from my cousin Bushy. Mum was peaceful and calm, and really not interested in my biscuits, nor my gentle chatter about who was sending their love and hugs to her.

This. This is now Mum’s life. And I come to realise that although the umbilical cord was cut nearly 60 years ago, we are still connected. Through all the threads of our lives, through the choices we have made, through the values we hold, through the life we seek to live, through the people we love.

But now, as The Captain and I start living in what was for years her home, it is beginning to be easier to make it our own. What is ahead, who knows, though we do know that at some point Mum will no longer be with us. At that point will I feel differently about this house? The stuff still in it? Will I regret the things I threw out, sent to charity shops, gave away, burned in the fire? (My old chest of drawers from when I was a child made very good kindling). We’re making the best decisions that we can for now; and if I have regrets in the future, then I’ll deal with them then. But I am confident that I will never regret taking the 20 boxes of books that I would never read to the dump.

***

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.

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Letters to The Times, and wetting a new baby’s head!

5 May

On 24 August 2021 I wrote

MisoCat sat with me on the sofa as I stabbed yesterday evening.

She’s occasionally good company, when she’s not attempting to hack into my work laptop by pressing ALL the keys on the keyboard.

The bonus pics today are mum’s father, Commander James Graham. I met an elderly gentleman at a party the other week (I know! A party!).. and he discovered who I was, and then reminded me how much Grandpa liked to write to the papers. Most weeks there seemed to be a letter from Cdr James Graham in The Times.

One of my cousins asked who the elderly gentleman was, who recalled our grandfather… and I responded with what was actually the more interesting story:

He is a neighbour of Archie and Sarah McConnel. The first story he told me (when all he knew was that I’m from Gatehouse) was when he first started work as a trainee quantity surveyor.. he had a meeting in Fleet Street with Mr Wolffe. At the end of the meeting Mr Wolffe cracked open a bottle of champagne and invited him to join him… in toasting the birth of his latest child. That baby was me! His name is Robert Waugh.

The moment I tell Sarah that her neighbour toasted my birth, over half a century ago

***

Trying to care for Mum as she developed dementia nearly broke me on a number of occasions. Gentle meditative stitching the Fisherman’s Smock probably saved me, giving me a focus and forcing me to carve out time when I could let everything go and just concentrate on those tiny stitches. 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.

And 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 couple of years it’s that chronology and time are less important than we might believe.

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