Memories come in scraps and shades, some bright and clear, others

misty and unsure.

As a child my dreams were vivid.

Which ones were reality Petunias in masses cascading along the mossy path.

Ivy and dappled sunlight

Warm smells of pastry, of succulent gravy, never tasted since.

The village

My nurses uniform, tending to the postman, to imaginary patients.

In the shop with my father, sitting in his butcher’s basket, the laughter,

the banter, the huge walk in fridge which scared me, the soulless eyes of

the dead animals.

Watching big men in their bloody white coats scrubbing deeply grooved

wooden counters and chopping boards.

Laughing, always laughter.

I was brought up on laughter, despite my Grandfather’s suicide and the

carefulness of those early post war years.

The farm, the idyllic years.

Little yellow chicks in the kitchen, wobbly and innocent like me.

Eagerly sucking lambs and calves

Clippy mats and the jet black range which smelt of doughy bread

The evil farm assistant we hated who drowned little kittens and had a

one eyed dog who growled in the cow shed when we collected the milk.
He was our nightmare along with the hissing geese who flapped at us as

we took warm cans of tea to the men on the big threshing machine.

We were too frightened to return past the cows who stared at us with

their sad eyes and sideways mouths and the geese who were determined

to get us this time.

Burniston Rocks. Endless holidays with Auntie Lydia , crabs and sandy

socks and the long hill home.

Scary nightmares about the war, would it happen again

The reflection on the ceiling of the paraffin lamp in my parent’s

bedroom.

Thunderstorms and lions

But above all, boundless unconditional love, filling every crack of

wherever we lived and whatever we did

Never judging, always loving, trusting and giving.

That was my mother.

That was how we thought it would always be, and through the turmoil

of those University years, through marriage, divorce and our Father’s

too early death, this love sustained us.

It began slowly at first. It was something that could be ignored or

laughed about.

Forgetfulness.
I’m like that too. Too busy ,too much to think about, juggling my multi

roled life.

We laughed.

Mum sent my husband a” Happy Birthday Grandson “ card. She laughed

too.

The Grandchildren she adored. Their birthdays passed her by.

At night, in the next room we would hear her pacing, restless,

endlessly searching through her things. What was she searching for?

At York station. She wasn’t there. She didn’t meet us. Two worried

children.

Two pairs of my Mother’s eyes turned to me.

Questioning. Where’s Nana?

Meeting her by chance outside the station. “You did say 10, Dear?”

My elegant and beautiful Mother in a stained dress and shredded tights.

Trips across the moors to Scarborough. Mother in sheltered

accommodation.

“Your Mother must keep the place clean. She breaks things.I have

complained to her frequently.”

The dust. The rotting food. The uneaten scraps.

I bought her a diary. Her appointments were marked.

I took her shopping.

My sweet and bewildered children found two thousand pounds hidden

in tiny places amongst her once treasured things.

We laughed with her. Nana was eccentric and funny.

She danced in the street. She sang loudly in restaurants.

She lifted up her skirts and displayed her underwear in shops.

She dare do things that were not allowed.

She collected things from cafes, sugar bowls. We checked her bag

before we left .

“ Put it in your bag darling, it’s lovely, and so are you.”

Buying her new clothes. Hanging on to her in case she escaped from the

fitting rooms. Peeling off two dresses, four vests.

Outside the changing rooms in her underwear, shouting and swearing.

Nan was so funny.

The last time we took her out for a meal was on her birthday in May.

The woods were filled with the heavy scent of bluebells.

The light was golden with a hint of warmer days to come.

The streets of the town were still quiet, the locals preparing for the

summer rush.

We still call this place, Nan’s café. She loved it here, it was where she

and her friends would meet to share memories and family news.

We collected her from her little flat, and we trooped in, arms full of

flowers and presents.
We were all fine to start with. Nan looked lovely in her three sets of

beads, and buttoning her clothes was no problem. She was so pleased to

see us.

During the course of the meal she began to raise her skirts declaring she

was uncomfortable. My daughter and I one on either side of her kept

reassuring her, and gently making her decent again by pulling down

her skirts, under the table without anyone noticing.

We got through the first course without much trouble, explaining to my

curious son that Nana liked sugar in her soup, and that was the way it

was.

However she gradually became more and more agitated, and without

further ado promptly pulled out her chair and lifted her leg onto the

table, displaying an assortment of underwear, determined to show us

all where she was uncomfortable.

The kids disappeared under the table to pick up the items that had

been swept aside by the unexpected event.

I examined the offending leg, as if this was the most natural thing in the

world to happen, and ignoring any interested parties, managed to

persuade her to lower it back down to the floor as the roast lunch

arrived.

We all tucked in, pretending that nothing unusual had happened,

When suddenly my ladylike Mother threw her knife and fork

onto the table, with a resounding bang.

“I’m not eating this!” announced this elegant lady, who wore matching

hats shoes and gloves,

“It’s shit!”

There was a frozen moment. Time stood still momentarily.

The clatter of cutlery ceased, exchanged pleasantries were hushed.

Our family were fixed in a still and silent tableau for all of three

seconds.

I then bounded over to the till, whilst the kids bundled my indignant

mother, who never uttered a swear word in her life, out onto the street,

with the speed of a silent movie.

I closed the door of the café with as much dignity as I could muster, and

turned to face my two wide-eyed children, and my dear mother with

mashed potato down her cardigan, and her skirts around her waist,

determinedly clutching the menu.

We looked from one to the other in awkward silence until my son piped

up.

“Nana said our dinner was shit.”

“Well it was,” was my quick reply, and then we started to giggle.

We wandered down onto the beach still helpless with laughter,

Mum joining in too, wiping her eyes on one of her many underskirts.

“Do you want to see me dance?”
My Mother asked, her eyes sparkling, as she kicked off her shoes into

the sand.

“Well, why not” I said, clasping her bird-like hands, as the kids

ran, squawking with embarrassment down to the sea.

Then she couldn’t find her way home.

Wandering the streets in her night-clothes.

Frantic calls to my sister in Canada.

Advice from my doctor, her doctor,

the specialist.

We have to put her in a home.

She barricaded herself in the bathroom, like she did when we organised

meals on wheels, the Home Help, Social Services.

She cried and cried, “How can you do this to me.?” From the other side

of the door.

The terrible unspeakable guilt.

“You will break up your family if she lives with you”

“But she’s my Mother.

We promised never to put her in a home.”

My sister arrived from Canada

The shock showing plainly on her face.

We had to do it. We didn’t know how.

We would have to lie.

“We’re taking you to an Hotel, Mum. For a little break.”

Her eyes lit up. She loved to travel.

“With you two? It’s ages since we went away together.”

She wanted us to take her shopping. To buy new clothes for the trip.

“I think I’d like a little job, “ she smiled.

“Well, they may need someone in this hotel,” my sister glanced at me.

I looked away, feeling like Judas.

The Warden of the sheltered accommodation had steel grey eyes.

“What cruel children you are.”

She sniffed at us in disbelief, as we handed her weeks of unpaid rent

“Make sure that you clean the place before you leave, and don’t take

any light fittings.”

We toured the homes.

We saw the results of Alzheimer’s.

We stared out along Scarborough beach where we had played as kids

and we cried.

There was a party.

Relatives and residents sat round starched white cloths, eating

strawberry scones.

“Look, everyone,” Mum in her blue and white dress with all the buttons

done up wrongly, ran towards us, smiling. “Two of my lovely

daughters.”

The warden with steel grey eyes stared as we took her away.

I drove, my hands were shaking.

My sister, hands holding Mother tightly, talked incessantly.

Her hands, now so claw –like, gripped our clothes,

“But, aren’t you coming too?”

“Phone me, but don’t come to see her for at least a week.”

We were reassured by the owner.

“She’s going to have the big room at the top, overlooking the sea.

“She’ll be happy with us, we’ll take good care of her.”

We drove off, we left her there with her little case. Her few sad

belongings. A bewildered look on her face, plucking at her skirt.

“I need a gin and tonic” .My sister broke the silence.

We sat in a bar that overlooked the sea.

We couldn’t find anything to say.

It seemed irrelevant we both hated gin.

Somehow we had to pay for what we had done.

Pink dresses and slippers.

Cardigans and beads.

Semi circles of nodding, sleepy grandmothers ,

grouped around the television set.

Mum got bigger.

“She’s eating well,” they said.

“But we haven’t the staff to take them out much.”

Mum and I sitting on a bench on South Cliff, both of us looking out to

Sea at the sun glinting on the water.

Ice cream dripping on her dress.

Mum crying quietly. People staring at us.

I’d stopped explaining , apologising long ago.

She didn’t ask for this degrading disease. No one does.

“There’s something wrong with me. I’m frightened.”

Her little hand clasped mine.

“Put an end to it all, please. Throw me in the dustbin.”

In American films, they always tell each other , “I love you,” and

everything’s alright.

It was not alright.

One day, she couldn’t remember who I was.

I called to see her, my arms full of flowers.

She looked away and carried on talking. Her words becoming indistinct,

her language distorted.

“Mum, it’s me. Hello.”

Her eyes were dead when they looked at me.

She walked out of the room.

My throat ached. I sat on the wall outside and cried tears of disbelief.

I rang my husband, not able to make any sense.

What can anyone say. The person you once knew is no longer

there.

It was then the visitors stopped.

“There’s no point.”

They were unanimous in that.

“She doesn’t know me. There’s no point.”

Some of them couldn’t cope with seeing her like this.

I knew the feeling. I found it hard too.

“She’s disturbing the other residents.”

We were told on Mother’s Day.

“She steals their things. She writes her name on everything. We found

these notes dropped from her window”

Tiny pieces of paper were handed to me.

“Help Me.” They said, in shaky writing.

“We need to give her tranquillisers. She won’t sit still She gets too

agitated. We don’t have the staff to cope. We could be closed down.

Do you think you could find her somewhere else to live?”

We found a little piece of Paradise amidst all this, twenty minutes from

my home.

A circular, glass built unit, full of sunshine, with a garden of lavender

and roses, and a staff with a sense of humour, and lots of love to give.

“Auntie Margaret”, they said, “you come and stay with us.”

The tight knot inside me loosened, as those once dignified, now

bewildered people adopted me.

Round the circular route Mum and I would travel, gathering people.

Sometimes as many as eight of us would snake in and out of the rooms,

hand in hand, talking, constantly talking, in a variety of different

languages, as yet unknown to mankind.

We would meet Lydia, who spent her days meticulously examining

every cushion in every lounge, pulling them out and stacking them

high, making a barricade for us hikers.

“Who’s done this?” Jack, our leader would come to an abrupt halt.

“I knew they were after us. We’ll just have to keep marching.”

Pauline, dressed in Jaeger from head to foot, a retired headmistress,

would always be pounding along in the other direction, her shopping

bag laden with toiletries, ornaments, toilet rolls, biscuits and cups,

flowers, and other people’s slippers and shoes.

“You look lovely, dear,” she would kiss me on the cheek.

“Will you ring my daughter, to come and fetch me.”

I grew to love the place and the characters. It became my second home.

I would sit next to Mum, who would perch on the edge of the sofa

Ready to take flight at any given moment, dragging me along behind

her in a vice-like grip.

She would chatter to me often getting stuck on her favourite word of the

Evening. A word not yet found in the dictionary.

The carers would laugh and chatter with the residents and the banter

would flow.

“It’s time you rang my daughter,” Pauline would announce for the tenth

time in so many minutes.

“We will , Dear, we will.” They soothed her.

“Ribble, pity, ribble, ribble,” mother would declare.

“Do you think so?” I queried.

Mum would nod solemnly.

“They’re coming!” Jack would announce loudly from the doorway.

“Don’t worry, Jack, they won’t harm you, come and have a cup of tea.”

Joyce would lead him to the tea trolley, and he would follow, looking

round furtively.

Lydia would appear, with arms full of cushions, panting and exhausted.

“Thank you, Lydia,” Carole would call out.

“She’s never grateful, is she?”Lydia would sip her tea, balanced on

cushions, shaking her head.

Pauline would then return with all the toilet rolls she could find, stacked

high in her handbag.

“They’re so heavy,” she would puff. “Have you rung my daughter, yet?”

“Sod off the lot of you,” Jenny would declare from the corner of the

room. “Is my dinner ready, yet?”
.
And I would sit, a part of it all, feeling quite at home as they all arrived

pink and shining from their baths for a milky drink and a goodnight

hug.

As I sat on Friday nights, in a sunny corner, my head resting on my

mother’s shoulder, listening to Mum speaking her own language, I

sometimes thought there was more sanity with these people in their

own worlds than the one that I lived in.

I got a phone call at work to say she’d had a fall.

“She’s in hospital,” I was informed.

“She’s has to have a hip replacement.”

The faceless, concrete block, the panic inside me as I found her ward,

inside the wilderness of corridors, searching for that one special person.

She was in a room alone, lying on her back, staring at the rooftops.
Her bed had bars around it. She plucked endlessly at the sheets.

I called her name, and she turned to look at me, her face wet with

tears.

“Mum it’s alright. I’m here. You’re in hospital.”

Her face displayed real terror. She clutched my hand and babbled

looking wildly around the room.

I tried to soothe her, but it was obvious she was in pain.

She cried out when I left the room, but I had to find someone, to make

them understand.

“She’s got Alzheimer’s,” I explained for the fiftieth time, to a harassed

looking nurse.

“She doesn’t understand what is happening to her”

That was the problem. She didn’t understand.

When her womb collapsed and they tried to fit her with a ring, she kept

calling out as we held her hands. She looked so lost and frightened.

The doctor seemed cold and unfeeling.

Was it my paranoia or did people think she was less of a person?

Wasn’t it up to us to give her the best quality of life that we could?

But she wouldn’t be beaten. She was back dancing in a few weeks time,

and took to helping Lydia with the cushions.

She grew so dreadfully thin, and then she started to lash out at the

nurses.
During our last Christmas together, she learned how to hug people

again.

We had mince pies and sherry and my husband helped her to open her

presents.

She took my daughters head between her hands, the little girl she had

loved and looked after during those early years.

“You are lovely,” she said distinctly.

At the Christmas party we danced to “We’ll meet again,”

And we both got giggly on too much mulled wine.

When she was dying, she fought to stay with us.

The Doctor gave her three days, she was having none of that.

I filled the room with bluebells and candles.

My daughter sat by her beside, washed her and talked to her.

Roles were reversed.

We played her favourite music.

I sang to her, James Taylor, “You’ve got a friend.”

I read excerpts from my Father’s diaries.

I talked to her constantly, “Do you remember when..?”

Relatives who hadn’t bothered to see her, who had said there was no

point in visiting her, as she wouldn’t know them, sat by her bed and

cried.

I watched, trying to forgive.

We all watched, the three sisters, and waited, trying to fill her last

hours with as much love as she gave us.

She wouldn’t give up.

She wasn’t ready.

She woke up suddenly and stared straight past me and smiled.

She held out her arms.

I looked round expecting to see someone there.

I stood in front of where she was looking and she frowned and tried to

peer round me.

I moved out of the way and she smiled again.

My sister and I held on to each other tightly.

“I think Dad has come for her” she said.

Once when I was alone, I fell asleep, my head resting on the bed.

I woke with a start, to see my Mum smiling at me.

She held out her arms to me.

“Hello, my Darling,” she said.

She died in my arms four days before her eightieth birthday.

She didn’t wake up for three days, and just before she died she opened

her eyes and looked straight at me.

“Go on, Mum, you can go now, “ I whispered,

“Bob will be waiting for you.”

I sat with her for a long time.

I remembered the good times.

I remembered how she had taught me to love life.

How much she had given to me.

Unconditional love filled every corner of the room.