Marianne Talbot ‘Have you thought which undertaker we’ll use?’ asked my brother five minutes after he arrived.
This was just after I had read the ‘care domains’ file drafted by our district nurse. This is the document upon which funding for nursing homes turns. I read it aghast. Every word of it is true. But oh dear, I just don’t think of mum like that.
Looking at it from the outside, it brings home why I am not managing at the moment. Mum hits ‘priority’ or ‘severe’ on just about every measure. She is aggressive, clingy, depressed and unable to do anything for herself.
But having made a couple of comments, I completed my bit by saying something about mum as she really is. Or perhaps more accurately, mum as she used to be. She was (and sometimes is) such a lovely person. Warm, funny, sharp, caring, irreverent, honest...
She was a fantastic mum. Not particularly maternal in the abstract, she was fiercely protective of her own children. That didn’t stop her neglecting us. But it was a benign neglect that enabled us to get on with our own lives. It certainly suited me. Mum always had projects on the go. She was always passionate about something or other. I am proud to be like her in this.
Not that we didn’t have our problems.
She used to say that, from when I was about ten, she recognised that I was going my own way in life whatever she said, so she set out to support me. And support me she did. Not in a traditionally motherly way, perhaps, but in her way. For example, when I left home at 16 to live in a bedsit in London. Mum saw me off at the station and as I closed the train door, she handed me an envelope. It contained £5 and a note saying that if I ever needed to get home I should use it, that she loved me, and whatever happened I should never be afraid to come home.
I am frightened about going on holiday. Will she die before I get back? I can’t not go because she might not die, and then where would I be? I need time away.
That’s why my brother is here. And my sister. My other brother is coming at the weekend. Mum won’t know what’s hit her.
They know I have started the process to get her into a home. They also know that I think she may be in her final weeks (she now weighs less than I do).
But no, I haven’t yet thought about which undertaker we’ll use.