With my big brother and big sister! Such joy to spend time with them this weekend.
I do love this picture, and will forever treasure it.
So much has happened since that picture was taken. That window in the background is now our bedroom window; we’ve been living here for about 3 months, and are in the process of purchasing the house, so that Mum can continue to pay her care costs.
And just over a month ago I started having funky vision. I say funky, making it sound quite fun. And it has not been fun. Though, in all honesty, initially I was not worried about it at all, believing it wasn’t serious and it would just go in the same way it had just arrived.
But troubling things don’t seem to just go in the same way that they just arrive.
After a trip to the optician followed by an emergency appointment with the eye consultant at the hospital, I was referred for an urgent brain CT scan (over Christmas and New Year). And then a follow up appointment with the eye consultant, followed by an urgent brain MRI scan and then an attempted urgent lumbar puncture (after nearly 8 hours in the day clinic and two consultants literally stabbing me in the back, they admitted that they didn’t have the skills and referred me to the anaesthetist team to carry out the procedure).
The MRI scan had revealed that I didn’t have ‘anything bonkers’ going on in my brain (according to a consultant as he was attempting to give me a lumbar puncture); the lumbar puncture revealed that the fluid around my brain is at considerably higher pressure than is normal, and this is the cause of the funky symptoms (vision loss, headaches, brain-like-soup, memory loss and who knows what else that I can’t currently remember clearly).
Anyway, I now have a diagnosis, and another appointment with the consultant at the eye clinic next week to discuss how we manage it going forward. My life will be different, but it always was going to be different… all our lives keep changing. How we respond to that change is what matters.
***
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.
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 dementia more bearable for so many people. Thank you, thank you, a thousand thank yous.
I mentioned the other day to The Captain that I thought that deep teal blue might work on the wall in the bedroom.
So he painted. Then we bought fabric. And lampshades.
And now our bedroom looks different. Hurrah!
I still love these colours. But I don’t know if we’ll carry them through to our new home… yes, everything is seen through the prism of how we will live in our new home.
It’s interesting that for a long time I couldn’t imagine Mum and Dad’s house looking any different to how it always did. But over the last couple of years we’ve removed many bits of furniture and of art, and to be honest the place looked pretty shonky when we first moved in, piles of books everywhere, groupings of furniture, depending if it was for throwing out, for taking to a charity shop or for someone in the family. And so many boxes and boxes and boxes of dusty old books. Books which in my heart of hearts I know I will never ever read, but which seem so very familiar as they have always been on the shelves. Many are German and are inscribed to Dad, in the 1930s
Now, when I walk in the door, I can see the potential more than I can see what it used to be. And this feels deliciously hopeful and exciting. The Captain and I will be creating our own new home in this space. There might be aspects of Mum’s life woven in there, in the way her genes are part of my DNA, but the house will, eventually, be so very different.
In further evidence of my love of colour, but also of experimenting, I see that a few days after I posted the pic of the new colour palette for our bedroom I posted about a latest project:
Yesterday I used about a year’s supply of discarded (but saved) onion skins to dye a white shirt.I am now the owner of a shirt that looks like it’s been dipped in builder’s tea. And then you’ve dribbled more stronger tea here and there.
And because I love experimenting, I threw another shirt into the dye vat as soon as this one was out.
I threw both shirts out – they were hideous. I’ve stopped saving onion skins for the moment and have decided that home-dying is not my thing, not for now anyway. I’ll no doubt come back to it some day. When we were packing up to move house, I discovered a box of dye materials: natural madder, indigo dye, weld, all purchased during that first lockdown year, before I realised how Mum’s mind was blurring and how all our lives would change. Perhaps I should have thrown the whole box out, but it’s here with me in our new home, waiting for a day when colour is the thing that will nourish me. No idea where it is though, we have two rooms piled high with boxes, most with enigmatic labels like ‘Office Last Bits’ or ‘Craft and books’. But which craft? And which books? And where will I put them when I find out?
I hope 2024 is treating you well. It’s not being the best of starts to a year so far, but I’m taking the view that it can only get better from here on in. Let’s see, eh?
***
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.
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.
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.
My smock has wild strawberries! All to do now is to soak it to remove the plasticky stabilizer stuff that I use to transfer the design. And then onto the next design.
Your bonus pic today is a corner of our living room… the lamp base came from Dad’s parents in Germany.. I love how it seems the whole base is lit up from the inside when it’s just the reflected light from the gold inside the modern shade.
Mum’s parents returned to Scotland from South Africa when I was 12. Pickfords had packed up all their stuff and the whole house was full of tea chests. Each day after school for that first week I would come home via their house and would unpack a tea chest with Gran. Oh the treasures! This vase with the glads in it was one. We’ve always called it the majolica vase but I’m not certain it is. Mum gave it to me some years ago when she began dispersing her things.
The wine cooler was a gift to my parents on their silver wedding anniversary.
And the decor was created by The Captain… this is the drinks cupboard that he made, including the waney edged top which I love.
I’m just going to leave that there.
I have so much going on in my life just now, with more unhappiness than I thought it was possible for me to bear. And I discover that when all this is going on I kinda lose the ability to write anything about it at all. And there was me thinking that I could channel the negative emotions, and lay my vulnerability out there. I think because it impacts other people, it feels like I should not share, that I have to edit what I say, how I say it, have to curate this bit of my life on here. And if I feel unable to express things just as I feel them, then I am lost here.
I also have a few other priorities for my time at the moment, and so will focus my attention on the things that really have to be done. And then, when the time is right, I’ll come back to this. But there may not be many posts on here for a while.
***
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.
I love making these leaves, and I’m so amazed that they actually look like leaves!
I was less than pleased when MisoCat decided to walk across my lap as I was stabbing, and managed to pull one of the previous leaf’s threads with her sharp wee claws… but perhaps only I will ever notice.
I bought a remnant of luxury faux fur this weekend. It reminded me so much of the bonus pic chinchilla fur stole which belonged to my German grandmother. It’s the softest, most sumptuous thing, and it’s always felt so terribly glamorous to me. And, our sensible glamorous foremothers had pockets!
My intention is to make a tribute faux fur stole, with a bright satin lining. And pockets. Possibly even beautifully hand-smocked pockets, we’ll see.
I’ve still not done anything with that luxury faux fur, but it’s packed up in a crate and moved down to Mum’s house, where we hope to be living by Christmas. It’s been rather alarming seeing the amount of fabric and yarn that I have, waiting for me to have time to make them into something perfect. Mum used to say that we should not let perfect be the enemy of the good, and I think I have been more able to live by that maxim in recent years, when it has felt that very little can be anywhere near perfect, and actually that is all just fine. We have a pretty good life, and long may it continue.
But those pockets, are they not the most adorable things?
***
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.
Mostly I did some knitting today, but I fit a few minutes of good stabbing too.
And already I’m thinking of the next design. It will be quite different.
And still, it will be quite different. Life I mean.
Two years ago when I first wrote those words, they probably were only about the design for the smock. And yet we all knew that all our lives would be quite different. I think there was already talk of the new normal, whatever that was going to be.
We had come through almost a year of being painfully aware that our lives were changing dramatically … Mum, who had always been the centre of our worlds, was no longer able to hold that centre. And each week, she changed – the essence of her was still at her heart, and it still is, but more bits around the edges seemed missing with each visit.
We knew the future would be different, without Mum in it. But at this stage, despite how much of her we felt we had already lost, we could not conceive of a world in which she wasn’t breathing life into it.
And now… I still can’t conceive of that world. Mum still breathes life into my world whenever I visit her, but also at random moments, as I recall things about her. And yet it feels like she has so little breath left.
In so many ways our lives are going to be different.
***
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.
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.
The third (and final) wee strawberry is complete so this weekend will be all about the many shades of green on leaves and stems.
The bonus pic today is from last weekend’s breakfast on the beach. We brewed up fresh coffee (Rwandan beans from @rafikicoffee_) and although we drank from disposable cups (don’t judge me. The Captain worked in the packaging industry and we’re using up old supplies) we used proper heavy linen table napkins. This one must have belonged to my great grandmother, given her initials are embroidered in the corner. It’s dated 1937. The stitching is incredibly fine, much finer than I could manage. But… I have many linen napkins, mostly un-embroidered, so perhaps I will ensure future generations know they passed through my hands by adding my initials to them? Or a swallow, swooping across the corner. Or a wee wild strawberry.
Lately I’ve been reflecting on being in an “in between” stage of our lives.
It’s not always a comfortable place to be – the anchors that you have gotten used to using, to hold you secure, are pulled up (albeit possibly only temporarily). You’re not sure that your navigational system is going to get you back to safety… you hear these days of SatNavs that take you on most inappropriate journeys.
But there is also a freedom that you have during a period of limbo. While everything is in the air, you have the space to think more creatively, you are not bound so much by what has always been, and what you had always unthinkingly assumed would be. When nothing is secure you can throw it all up in the air… and while it is up there, floating about, you can go foraging for new things, for wild things. Or just pick up the old things that you really want in your future life.
Specifically we are between homes. We are living in the home that The Captain made his home 23 years ago. When I say ‘made’ I mean it literally – he practically built the whole place, from a run down wreck. We hope to move into what has been Mum and Dad’s home sometime before Christmas.
And during this limbo period, much needs to be done. There are all the legal and administrative aspects of selling a home, much planning, many spreadsheets, all the lists! And then there are days and days of going through STUFF, deciding what to keep, what to throw, what to try to sell. But instead of getting bogged down in those tasks, I find myself more and more just thinking about what life will be like on the other side, once we have moved.
Daily I say to myself, “I’ll do that when we are settled in Galloway”. And some of this is valid, though possibly only in my own head (buying a bike makes sense once we live somewhere I will feel more confident and happy cycling on the roads, and where we don’t live half way up a hill). But I’m sure there are many things I could just get on with now in my life. And the lesson I am taking from this is that if there’s something I think I’ll enjoy, I should just get on with it. So long as no-one else gets hurt in the process.
This is actually the one piece of advice my Grandmother gave me the night before I left home to go to University.
She told just 18 year old me, “Now don’t do anything you’ll regret, Loïs. But remember the only things you regret in life are the opportunities you missed. If it makes you happy, do it.” So, I am going to embrace new things, open my eyes to new opportunities and possibilities. We are going to live our best life.
***
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.
Wild strawberry season might be over but this one is still bearing fruit.
The edges of Mum’s garden are abundant with wild strawberries.. I love how enthusiastically they spring up and how generously they provide such delicious wee fruit.
Photo 2 may look like a Jar Of Not Very Much. But look closely. Although it’s an old mustard jar (Colman’s English) those are not mustard seeds in the bottom.
They are pearls. Seed pearls. And each one was found in a mussel picked on the Solway coast, mostly at Carrick.
As children we were often out foraging, getting food for free as Mum called it (after the Richard Mabey book). Those wee islands in the third photo are mussel beds, or they were in the 1970s. And at low tide you can walk to them, even if you’re a short-legged wee girl. So we ate a lot of mussels when there was an R in the month.
The Solway coast is opposite Windscale (as it was back then) and mum was vaguely worried about the mussels being radioactive. So she invited our science teacher round for supper, on the condition he brought his Geiger counter.
He duly arrived and set up his ‘probe’. He sat it in the sofa, next to my bum to get a background reading… and off it went bleeping and clicking and flashing.
Then he stuck it in the bucket with the freshly foraged mussels. And everything slowed down.
Conclusion: my bum was more radioactive than the sea near a nuclear power station. Hurrah! I think.
Back to that jar. Whenever we found a pearl in a mussel we would save it in the jar. We were going to make the most beautiful opulent seed pearl brooch. Or a tiara. A whole crown! With sceptre and orb to match, why not?
So that jar I found tucked away at the back of the cupboard? That’s a Jar Of Hope. And it will never be empty.
We’re still in the process of clearing Mum’s house, in advance of us moving there. I re-found this Jar of Hope the other day. It won’t surprise you to know that it was put firmly in the Keep pile.
***
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.
I’ve been distracted with other projects but here we are stabbing the wee strawberry again. Not a euphemism.
We took Mum out for a coffee on Monday. Well she had a hot chocolate. She looked so thrilled when this enormous big cup and saucer arrived in front of her. I looked alarmed, wondering if she could manage it.
And then her muscle memory kicked in and she picked up the teaspoon and spooned spoonfuls of hot chocolate fluff from the top of her drink into her mouth. She did this so slowly, so precisely like she wasn’t really sure it was real.
But I’ve seen her do this so many times before. Such a simple pleasure, spooning the fluff off the top of your drink and feeling it melt on your tongue. I do it too, when I have a cappuccino. Always have. Never thought before now that I maybe learned this from Mum.
The giant cup reminded me of a childhood weekend treat we occasionally had, possibly only in the winter. Mum had two ENORMOUS cups and saucers, bought in a French flea market I think. And she would make café au lait (hot milk with instant coffee and sugar) and we would drink it out of these cups as big as our heads. I reminded Mum of this treat. But it’s gone, she couldn’t remember it. And that doesn’t matter. We enjoyed those times, she made them special. And I now thank her for that.
And the bonus pic is the view looking west from Carrick Shore, at breakfast time on Sunday.
I loved that moment of joy with Mum, watching her spoon the fluff off the top of her chocolate. And, having recognised it as something I had instinctively learned from her, I notice it and recall this pleasure every time I sit in a café and drink a frothy coffee.
Small pleasures. We should try to notice them, to capture them each day.
Tonight I’m attending the JustGiving Fundraiser of the Year Awards at the Roundhouse in London. I shall wear a frou frou frock and will accessorise with a rather fabulous beaded bag which Mum used to use. I’m a finalist in the Creative Fundraiser of the Year category; for the Taking Smock of the Situation Project. You all know of the love that went into each and every stitch, the stories that they unleashed. Perhaps the most unexpected outcome was the outpouring of support I received through it, often from strangers. That support and love is for every one of us who has experience of dementia.
Today I could not be prouder (or more surprised). I feel like a winner just being recognised and shortlisted for the final.
I’ll let you know how it goes – probably on Instagram first of all, so do check me out there if you’re interested.
***
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 