Wednesday 14th December

I am not really joking either, I am quite concerned about her.  I am not sure how I would cope if I had to have her living with me.  Maybe it’s just old age and her being forgetful – she was never the brightest of women, or if she was, she was pretty good at keeping it to herself over the years.  Or maybe it was more that Grandma always dominated, she had to be the star, the prima donna, the centre of attention, the one to always get the last word in and undoubtedly the fount of all knowledge.  And maybe my mother had just learned over the years not to argue, not to insist, not to get in Grandma’s bulldozer way.  And unfortunately that was how I reacted to her too, I followed Grandma’s lead in ignoring my mother, or rather by-passing her.  I always ran to Grandma with a grazed knee, it was Grandma who insisted on checking my homework, and it was to Grandma I handed my school report each term.  Grandma was literally in loco parentis; both my parents conspiring to absent themselves in different ways.

After Grandma died I shared the house in Putney with my mother for several years, but it was as if we were both camping in the house really; my mother spent all her time in the kitchen and conservatory while I kept to my bedroom and made the sitting room my own too, but neither of us really lived there as if it were our home, it felt more like a staging post, a rest-stop between different destinations.  And even then my mother was absent-minded to the point of distraction, constantly running out of basics like milk and bread, heaps of old newspapers which she kept meaning to do something with, a whole collection of empty yoghurt cartons sitting on the draining board next to a pile of unopened letters.  We seemed to be living separate lives, and though we would sometimes eat together it was more often in silence or a forced attempt at polite conversation.

In a funny sort of way although I knew my mother very well, I was always looking at the symptoms rather than the cause; I never really got to know what made her tick.  She has always been a bit of a mystery to me, one I admit I was never too bothered to unravel, preferring in a way to keep my own distance from this woman, who though my closest relation was so unlike me.  She had always been absent-minded, or other minded really, as if her real self was elsewhere, and it is this which makes it hard for me now to recognize if she is just being her usual muddled-headed slightly forgetful self, or if there might be something more serious going on.

I suppose I will just have to keep a closer watch on her from now on, we have settled in the last few years to just seeing each other about once a month, so maybe I will just pop in on her a bit more often.

I know you will think me selfish, and of course I will be there for her, but I just dread the thought that if she loses her independence so do I.