It wasn’t till when Mum developed dementia that the reason behind her reaction appeared. My mother had once been in service to the Duke of Newcastle-under-Lyne at Clumber House in Nottinghamshire. This revelation finally showed me whom my mum really was, how far she’d come and how walking out on security and wealth was something she could not comprehend.
As my father got older and frailer it left me with no choice but to sell the house and move them into a flat. My mum never recovered from the shock of it, and when we arrived at the new flat she refused to leave the car.
After many traumatic weekends, we went to a meeting at the hospital where the psychiatrist explained they may need to section her, as they were about to she caught my eye and she said ‘I will do it for my baby’, she always called me her baby. It was very powerful; the last time she was ever my mum in that sense. She was then taken to hospital without having to be sectioned, brief explanation – did she go willingly then? where she stayed for 6 weeks before transferring to a nursing home.
She had gone from being my mum who was certainly getting more eccentric and old, this funny looking woman with dementia. The first time I went to visit, I virtually walked past her and then felt sick as I thought ‘shit. That’s my mum’.
My mother died on Christmas Day, although dementia stole her from me, it also gave her back to me. When I visited her to the day before we listened to 9 Lessons and Carols on Radio 4, she used to love listening to it, and as she did her eyes opened one last time.
I admire her confidence and her enormous strength, courage and determination. I wish I could say to her: ‘wow you are a woman of today, you are just amazing’.
