Sunday

Sunday

Finally got to the bottom of the box of greetings cards that Mum had kept. It was a couple of decades-long record of the people that she mattered to. Christmas, Easter, birthdays, Mothers Day. There were even some that had been sent to Dad and he’s been dead for a dozen years now.

They’ll be outside in our recycling bins in the morning.

There wasn’t much to note. The same names popped up every year. Mostly anyway. There were a couple where the sender had included a change of address to a nursing home and their card would be missing from the next year’s batch. No prizes given for guessing what that meant.

I’m not sure what I was expecting to find. The name of someone Mum had kept in touch with but who we had failed to notify that she was no longer with us perhaps.

Instead what I found was an increasing number of cards that Mum had written but not sent and then some that were only half written. Not being well enough to get to church to give a card to all her friends there seemed a plausible explanation for some of those but not for the family next door who lived in the other half of the semi. We’d been advised by the doctors on the stroke recovery ward in The Hospital when Mum was first ill that her dementia was probably already quite advanced before she was admitted. What had prevented us from knowing how bad it was was that sufferers can appear quite high functioning to the untrained observer if their routine is not perturbed in any way. Looking back with the benefit of hindsight and the advice given by the staff at the homes Mum had been in the signs were there for all to see.

Could we have done anything different? I doubt it. The same goes for Lesley’s dad. How do you go about convincing someone with dementia that they have dementia? How do you go about getting them to get to consent to accepting treatment and support for a condition they don’t think they have? Specialists in the field call it Anosognosia. It’s a total minefield.

But progress is being made and boxes are being cleared. Our house looks and feels a lot less like an assault course and we both feel better for it. I’m not sure I’ll get used to the distinctive aroma of old people’s old stuff. We’d been feeling for a long time that while our house had been OK when we were both working and only needed it to eat and sleep in it was too small to live in 24/7. Now, on top of all our stuff we have the contents of two other houses moving through it and it’s draining us both.

I’m still picking through my Mum’s stuff painstakingly until I’ve got my hands on all the documents I need to proceed with her estate. It’s led to some surprise finds. Today I found the sympathy cards that had been sent to my Dad when his twin brother died. That was nice. I also found dozens of cards that Mum and Dad had been sent by The Vicar and her daughter. That only brought home how much they had meant to each other and made me feel worse for deciding that I wasn’t up, physically or mentally, to going to The Vicar’s funeral at the beginning of the month. I’ll carry that guilt for a long time.

Meanwhile, Lesley was going through some of the bits that I’d picked up during yesterday’s visit to her dad’s house. Most of it had been ancient trade catalogues. One of them had been useful in providing explanations for some of the strange paintbrushes and decorating tools that I’d found on earlier visits. Among the finds though, from right at the back of the cupboard where he kept his more valuable stuff, was a wallet. A very old wallet. A quick glance told me it had various mementos from his early career. Business cards, train tickets, receipts and so on. I handed it to Lesley as she loves that sort of thing.

But the surprises in it weren’t all nice ones. The trove included a letter that he’d received. I haven’t read it and don’t intend to. Given Lesley’s audible reaction I don’t need to. The crushing disappointment in the dad she’d idolised all her life told me everything. Goodness only knows why he’d kept it for 70 years.