December 3, 2008: missing mum as she was

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December 3, 2008: missing mum as she was

Marianne Talbot welcomes the return of her memory of her mother as she was before she got Alzheimer's disease

I passed the theory and hazard perception part of my driving test last Thursday! I was ridiculously pleased. Friends congratulated me but most added: ‘Of course you did’.

I can see why they think this. But, for me, learning to drive is a huge step outside my comfort zone. I wanted champagne and cries of delight.

Thinking about this, a hollow opened in my tummy. I realised that the person I really wanted to tell was mum. I had to fight back tears.

Incredibly, it is years since I have had an impulse based on thinking of mum as she used to be before the Alzheimer’s. I think this is extremely promising.

It is a sign that after all the years of caring for mum, the time is coming when I might again be able to think of her as my mum, instead of as my responsibility.

That sounds bad. I do not mean that during the years of caring for her I haven’t thought of her as my mum. It is rather that the mum she has been over the last twelve years is not the mum she was before. It was to the mum she was before that I wanted to announce my test success.

That mum would have whooped with pleasure. She would have made me feel that my pleasure was hers. My pleasure would have been hers. Her generosity in such things was life-enhancing in the extreme.

I used to think all mums were like this. But then, at a wedding once, I said to the bride’s mum ‘She looks wonderful, you must be so happy!’ Her mum replied grumpily ‘I’m glad you think so, but it’s about time isn’t it?’ I was shocked to the core. It wasn’t so much the suggestion the bride had been almost on the shelf (she was 29!), as her mum’s meanness of spirit. How does one’s self-esteem survive such a mum?

Perhaps this is unfair? Perhaps her mum was having a bad day? But the incident has stayed in my mind, attached to heartfelt thanks that my mum was so different.

Mum wasn’t blinkered in her belief in me. On the contrary, she was the first to say if she thought I was wrong, or that I had acted badly. But I never felt she was getting at me, or questioned her total support.

It will be wonderful to remember, and mourn, mum as she used to be. Until now I have been too busy fire-fighting to do anything but take mum as she comes. My impulse to tell her about my test suggests mum’s having gone into a home may mark the beginning of this process.

I do hope so.

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