On day 4 of my 100 days embroidery project I wrote the following:
Fly little swallow, fly.
I love the slow, methodical process of embroidery. I mean it’s really just paint by numbers for Elizabethan ladies isn’t it?
Anyway, my first swallow on this project is complete. I might mix it up a bit and do something else next instead of another swallow, what do you think?
I’m actually feeling quite proud of this. When I first thought of embellishing this smock, mum suggested swallows around the yoke. I loved the idea, and decided i would do it without once considering whether or not i actually could do it. And then I kept thinking what other motifs I could add… and in my head it all grew like topsy. And it was only then, as I was about to start that I remembered I haven’t embroidered anything for about 30 years. And I was never very good. I was overwhelmed.
But.. I’m also determined to create something remarkable, inspired by Mum and by memories.
Her short term memories slip away before they have time to lodge in her brain these days. But she still has stories of long ago. And oh such stories!
Dementia is confusing.. for the person with dementia and those around them. My wish is that nobody with dementia should go through it alone. Click on this link to make this true. Please.
Mum was born in Scotland but before she was a year old she had travelled south with her mother and big sister to South Africa where her father had bought a fruit farm.
She lived there until she was 8 and WW2 broke out… and they made the journey back north to Scotland again. And at the end of the war they took that journey south again.
This pattern continued, back and forth from Scotland to South Africa pretty much until she married dad. I grew up hearing stories of the whaling ships she traveled on and it all sounded like such A Big Adventure.
No wonder we love the swallows that make that same journey every year.
The above was written on the Day Three of the 100 Days. I knew at the time that I should keep a diary, to remind me later what happened when, and how I was or wasn’t coping. But I didn’t. I just couldn’t commit anything to paper. It was easier to stab the fabric, to process things as I slowly stitched.
But, thanks to modern technology, I can look back at the messages I was sending my brother, and recall some of what was going on.
On this day, I discover that we were working out a new rota, given that we could now spend time together in the same house. The plan was for one of us to have a week on our own at Mum’s, followed by a handover week when both of us were there together, then a week with the other one going solo. I drew up the rota for the next few weeks, and took a picture and sent it to James, not knowing that none of it would actually happen in that carefully planned way.
I also noted that morning that there had been no nocturnal wanderings overnight. We were living in the house next door to Mum and had set up a motion sensitive camera to capture movement in the sitting room (so alerting us to her wandering around the house at night, rather than just getting up and going for a pee). At this point we noted that she was ‘one night on, one night off’ in the nocturnal wandering stakes. I was worn out, I’m sure Mum was too.
The District Nurse showed up mid-morning, to re-dress the bandage on Mum’s leg. She had fallen some weeks earlier, and had skinned her shin. Mum’s skin is thinner than tissue paper and also takes forever to heal. Another factor was the water retention in her legs, so the wound was literally seeping, soaking the bandage. The advice was to take advantage of gravity and for Mum to keep her feet up (we had tried water retention tablets earlier in the year, but Mum did NOT enjoy how they made her need to go to the loo very suddenly). So, each afternoon Mum would have ‘quiet time’ in her comfy chair with her feet up, and a blanket wrapped over her legs to keep her warm and cosy. Mum’s quiet time also gave me time to focus on work for an hour or two.
If you want to read more about the 100 Days Project, and to know more about why I’m embroidering a smock, go to Taking Smock of the Situation.
Thank you to all who have already donated to my associated fundraiser for Alzheimer Scotland, you are absolute stars! And if you feel moved to donate again, or for the first time, then today is a good day to do just that. Thank you all, you already support me in so many ways, so I REALLY appreciate you digging deep and supporting others when you make a donation.
It’s only 7 months since I first started embroidering Mum’s smock, and recording my progress each day with wee stories about our lives, her life. It feels like several lifetimes ago, and it’s interesting to re-live that time, and to recall how far we had already come in our journey with Mum’s dementia.
I am someone who likes to know facts, who feels better if I feel I have some knowledge and if I can put a name to things. So, having seen that Mum wasn’t quite her usual self when I started minding her in January 2021, I researched ‘early stages of dementia’. If this had been a tick box exercise, Mum seemed to tick all the boxes. A typical list of symptoms is here (this one from The Alzheimer’s Society)
Memory problems
Difficulties in thinking things through and planning
Language and communication, for instance struggling to find the right word
Poor orientation (this is perhaps the one that I never identified with Mum)
Visual-perceptual difficulties
Changes in mood or emotion
Soon afterwards I spoke to her wonderful GP, who was professional kindness itself and discussed what, if anything, we should do about this. The GP confirmed that this indeed did sound like it might be the early stages of dementia, and also confirmed that we didn’t need to do anything, or not straight away. I enquired what the advantages of a diagnosis might be, and established that they ‘might be’ easier access to some forms of support. I’m not sure I discovered precisely what that support would be, but I also wasn’t sure what further support we needed or whether anything would actually be supportive.
This was to become the constant quest – ‘what support do we need? what else would help at this stage?’
The GP had established that Mum was not in physical danger, that she was not so vulnerable that she could no longer live on her own, and had also asked after me and how I was coping, which kindness immediately set off my tears.
I cry most easily at times when I am trying to be brave and cope with stuff and people show me kindness.
A few weeks after this conversation with the GP I cried when the local postie (who I only really know to wave at through the window when he delivers the post at Mum’s) was kind, and understood when I explained that Mum may have dementia, and that really the junkmail wasn’t a good thing for her.
With hindsight, so much had already happened by early June, but so much more would happen in the coming weeks. But we will come to that.
So, on Day Two on the #100daysproject I wrote this:
Today wasn’t as chaotic and so all was a bit calmer. And I had a long meeting online at work where I could listen and participate and stab the smock at the same time.
Swallows have swooped in and around our lives every summer for as long as I can remember. They nest in the eaves of Mum’s car port, and they dive bomb us every time we come out the back door.
Embroidering this swallow feels a bit like stabbing skin for a tattoo. The back yoke of the smock will have several swooping swallows.
Spoiler alert: the back yoke only has two swallows and I think it’s unlikely I’ll add any more – if only because in general I only ever see one or two swallows swooping at a time.
I’d be forever grateful if you felt inspired to donate to Alzheimer Scotland, it doesn’t have to be much because I know that every single penny will make a difference. They have a 24 hour helpline to ensure that no-one in Scotland need go through dementia alone. This coming week, could you make a donation instead of paying for a cup of coffee (or some other small treat) one day?
Was I the only one who hadn’t realised quite what an emotional investment this project is? I mean what was I thinking of? Embroidering memories, while Mum’s are slipping away like water through her fingers.
I wrote this on 1st June 2021 the first morning of embroidering the smock:
This morning started with a phone call at 5am. Mum had cut her arm and needed help. Just as well I knew where she kept her stash of more dressings!She had no recollection of how it had happened.
At 5.30 we were all sorted and I was very much awake but not ready to start work. So what’s a girl to do but start embroidering? The light was perfect and the steady stitching slowed me down and somehow gave me the focus to face the day. I didn’t get another chance to stab the smock till after supper time, when the light was less good.
I’ll tell you about why swallows another time. There’s lots of time. Ish.
The swallow was designed by my nephew Max, who enthusiastically threw himself into this project. That week when I started embroidering the smock was a few days after the first weekend we had ‘opened up’ from a long-term and pretty severe lockdown in Scotland. Max and his Dad (my brother) had come to stay in Galloway, and it was the first time I had been there caring for Mum when others were also around. The sense of relief, of beginning to understand quite how hard this had been on our own, was palpable. I was no longer alone (not that I ever was, I was with Mum, but I think you know what I mean).
Initially I felt quite overwhelmed by the enormity of this project. I’d embroidered way back years ago, when I was still a child, so I wasn’t entirely new to the idea of using threads to paint pictures on fabric. I remember I embroidered brightly coloured flowers up one leg of a pair of jeans (in the 70s, obviously), but don’t recall embroidering anything else, or anything that I would today be proud of.
Not knowing exactly how or where to start, I had done some research and had learned how I might transfer a design to the fabric (using a stabiliser that would then magically dissolve in water when I’d finished stabbing). And then I just started stabbing at the fabric, using what felt like the right thread. I’d maybe do those swallows differently now, but not much… and I realise that this project was never about the embroidery, it’s about the journey as they say, it’s about the memories, the slow pace of the stitching, the joy of creating something that will hold onto this time we’ve had.
By the end of Day One I had made some small progress. I had also consulted with The Embroidery Book, published in 1949 and given to me by my grandmother on my 11th birthday (it felt like an old book then, but with all these years behind me now, I realise it wasn’t THAT old).
Again, if you are moved to support Alzheimer Scotland, who work to ensure that no-one has to cope with dementia alone, please just clickety click here, and you will seamlessly be taken to my fundraising page. I’m currently 75% towards my target of £600, and I’d be beyond grateful if your kindness nudged me a bit closer to reaching that goal. Thank you.
SheWolffe trying on the smock before the embroidery started
On 1 June 2021 I joined the 2021 100 days project.
The 100 days project concept is simple: you choose a creative project, do it every single day for 100 days, and share your process on social using a memorable and relevant hashtag.
I had joined for the first time in 2020, during that first lockdown year. Mum was interested to join in too – her creative project was to make a small painting each day, mostly of something from the garden. She would take a photo of her painting each day and then email it to me and I then uploaded it on her Instagram account. For most of 2020 we were not allowed to see one another, and this creative act brought us closer together and gave Mum a positive focus each day during those long locked down lonely weeks.
Then in January 2021 I went to stay with Mum. Within days I was concerned that she wasn’t quite herself, and at the end of April she was diagnosed with mixed dementia.
As I started the #100daysproject I reflected that my life was now very different from previous years… I shared caring for Mum with my elder brother; our routine was that we stayed in Galloway with mum for 2 to 3 weeks at a time, and then swapped. Because of covid restrictions it was quite an isolated time, those first months of 2021.
Anyway back in the first weeks of January 2021 I found this fisherman’s smock which mum used to wear when she was sculpting her pottery animals. She hadn’t worn it for years and gifted it to me. I knew right then I wanted to embellish it, to embroider it with life.
Each embroidered element would connect to mum in some way. I had no idea if I had the skill to pull this off and create something more beautiful and meaningful than the smock itself, but each stitch would be so full of love for the remarkable woman who made me.
I recorded the progress on Instagram, initially posting every day (the 100 days are meant to be consecutive) but for various reasons my days were not consecutive, and I have also now recognised that this is a marathon, and not a 100 day sprint. So, two years later I still pick up the smock some days and stab the fabric. I still upload to Instagram each day I add stitches and if you want to see progress follow #TakingSmockOfTheSituation and #Smocktales on insta.
I started a fundraiser as a sideline of the project. Of course I did, I’m a fundraiser at heart and couldn’t help myself. So, if you are moved to contribute so no one in Scotland has to face dementia alone, please click here and support Alzheimers Scotland. I really appreciate your support, but more importantly so will so many others who are struggling to make sense of either their or a loved one’s dementia. It is a bewildering disease, for all of us.
I’ll add the backlog of slow stitching progress, and eventually I might catch up with myself and by then will have formed a regular blogging habit so you can see it (and my other adventures) in real time.
Trying to care for Mum as she developed dementia nearly broke me on a number of occasions. 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.
Alternatively you could buy me a coffee some time.
Shewolfinthevalley 