your letter to jeanette
Hi Neil,
I just wanted to say to you that I could tell you how it "feels" to have this memory problem - but from my mother's point of view - as we , her children(??!!)all grown up`I should hope, were very much with her , all in our own special ways, which gave her more variety...as we're all quite different from each other.
I know my mother was almost in tears one day in the summer (I'd go over every year in summertime, and for as much as a month more in the more recent years, when my father needed extra help (emotionally and physically) - he was exhausted but still in love with that SO LOVEABLE person , dear Meg, she's been in a nursing home since October last............ after years of being looked after by a string of carers 24x 7 (in the last 2 years) ...........well there was my lovely mother in a stew saying to me, why am i forgetting things - what does it mean.....? she knew I wouldn't say anything to anyone else (the youngest!) .......... you see things would go missing and my father tried to enlighten me, as being over here in Spain, makes it seem so unreal I suppose.... well I just kind of said to my mother that we all forget things and we can't always help it, and she shouldn't feel so bad.......... then it was mother trying to do the dishes, bless her - we should all realise that they must be allowed to do that, makes them feel good, but you see the fragility of them as they give you a knowing look, as if to say, thank you , for letting them do the dishes... you're heart then bleeds a little.
And to think, I'd get annoyed when things went missing at the beginning, as the word dementia never cropped up, and I'd been living abroad and was rather slow to click on.........sometimes after a lunch at the local hotel up the road, we'd walk down the lane together, and then my mother would burst into an attack at me, and then , yes then I realised that this was serious.........out of the blue, you know , for no fathomable reason.........it's as if they have to explode in order to feel a little sweetness afterwards, and a faltering sorry would come out like a child almost.........I really felt that my mother was trying to get over her fear and frustration , slowly but surely her power with words, poetry was being eaten up and it was as if she had to attack her nearest and dearest, as she did with my father, who she adored and he too.............but his lungs gave up and the progress of the disease got worse......
I couldn't believe it when I found myself showering mother and being quite the little nurse, and joking that I didn't feel I should be seeing some parts of
her, which amused her!!
Now my mother has recovered from her hip op brilliantly but trouble is she races around , as she's also lost a lot of weight.........this my mother, the artist golfer, the one to make other's feel good about themselves, the one who gave, gave gave and always said to me, "if I can help somebody along the road, then my living shall not be in vain".
Neil, I am writing this especially to you , as I know and trust your particular interest in this disease and I think it's lovely that you don't just want all the scientific jargon, quel ennuie as the French say!!
I haven't forgotten about your site, i've been into it, snooping around and liked the ground!! so will pop into it at another date. You're quite a man, Neil!!
oh, but isn't it strange how my mother (91) didn't want to listen to the village kids singing, as she normally (!) would have loved that, but I guess the awful sadness of it now means nothing, as the furniture in her house that she found in auctions, she loved buying antiques and so on, suddenly meant nothing either, and she said to me (in her own house), things, things things, who needs them, then she told my aunt not to bring flowers any more, isn'n't that strange? and to my sister she said recently, why take me out somewhere when I've nowhere to go back to, well my poor sister was taken aback at that, as she'd just settled in a bit, they thought, at the nursing home (17 inmates there only) ....so now it's my turn, this summer to see my mother in her new surroundings and to know that neither she nor I will ever go back to the lovely family house........but I still suspect she goes back in her mind to their first family home with her mother and father, so maybe she wasn't referring to "OUR" more recent family house.........
It's all too sad, and I want to just be able to pick her up in the car and whisk her off somewhere where we can be intimate.........you know mum and daughter , with no carers for a while...........we spent so many years sharing my mother with the carers, one of whom had the great insight to say, there'll come the day, Mary anne when you'll resent carers being around (she was the one who was there just till my father died and not much more later............. and my mother enjoyed her extrovert ways, so did I, she'd literally skip along the high street, and we'd giggle at that as she was quite hefty ..........she'd always say to my mother, if I don't see you through the week, I'll see you through the windae! scots you know, well how we'd laugh....and my mother , at that stage, could still repeat that or be critical,,,,that she was good at!!!!
Maybe one day there'll be a way of reversing all this loss of memory, but we just feel that we've lost the essence of our mother, the vital spark, the one who loved Dad's Army, and The Two Ronnies and would have everyone in fits copying them and so on..........
Neil, you'll make a fine nurse, well you already are aren't you, and laughter is the best therapy, so my mother claimed, she can still manage a knowing smile............
well, that's all for now,
hope you're well
give a thought to me in the summertime when a big lump comes to my throat on seeing my sweet mother!!!!!! haven't seen her for a year almost - it's too sad.
all the best,
maryanne
alias mailife49