Dear All;  and you are all very dear to me and I have been thinking of you a lot over the past many months.  Some of you may have forgotten all about me, some may have been wondering where I had got to, others may already know what I have been doing.

If you have been reading my blog for some time you will know that I am married to Richard, I have two daughters – one married and living in Sheffield and the other still at home with us. I have also been caring for my mother for fourteen years since my father died in 2010.  My news is that after a short illness my mother died on the 24th of October this year and I was by her side as she passed away.

Since about this time last year I had become more and more concerned about Mum and had been spending more time with her and, when not with her, anxiously trying to find ways of helping her which wouldn’t appear to interfere with her fierce (and I use that word advisedly) independence.  Mum was ninety-four when she died and was proud of the fact that she had been able to look after herself in her own home with no carers or home-help until just a very few weeks before her death.  She wanted no interference from anybody!  (My help was not considered home-help because she wouldn’t let me do any of her housework or cooking and she knew I would normally do as I was told.  Her sight was very poor and if I was quick and quiet I often managed to do a couple of things before I was called to order!)  I am also proud of her but because of her pride she didn’t ask for help when she needed it and she probably had more discomfort at the end than she should have had.

As soon as I realised how ill she had become I tried to get help for her.  This proved difficult at first because Mum denied she was ill when she spoke to the nurse and doctor I had telephoned! I spent a week nursing her alone and trying to get help for her.  Eventually, nurses and doctors turned up at her house and then a hospital bed was delivered.  Carers then came in twice a day to get her out of bed in the morning and then put her back in the evening. After a week of this increased help it was decided she was too ill to be at home and was taken to hospital.  There they discovered she had numerous things the matter with her on top of the rare bacterial infection that had been diagnosed at home. She had pressure sores.  Her heart was not working properly and because of this she had been taken off her high-blood-pressure tablets before going into hospital.  She had two oesophageal ulcers (which were treated in hospital), she was emaciated because she hadn’t been eating properly for months, though I had tried to encourage her to eat (I knew nothing of the ulcers!), she had bronchial trouble and no strength to cough, her hands and legs were swollen and she had to have her wedding ring cut off, which upset her.

During the first two weeks in hospital we were hopeful that she would recover enough to leave and go into a nursing home.  But, it was not to be.  She might have had a stroke because her speech became slurred and she lost the strength to move herself unaided.  She died in hospital a week later in a side room of the busy, overcrowded medical ward where she had been treated; too sick to be moved to a hospice and with no proper palliative care.  My sister and I did what we could to help but it wasn’t enough to make her comfortable.

The funeral took place the week before last and my sister and brother and Richard and I are now sorting out her house and belongings in readiness for the house sale, once probate has been granted.  It is sad and weary work.

On the plus side, we have found some fabulous photos of many family members past and present.  Mum wrote, but never shared with us at the time or since, two accounts of camping holidays we took in Scotland and the Welsh borders sometime in the late 60’s and early 70’s.  This has proved to be a treasure!

We have met up with most of our cousins and we are trying to organise some kind of regular meet-up that isn’t a funeral.

Mum’s best friend’s daughter came to the funeral and we will definitely see more of her in future.  When I told my sister on our sibling WhatsApp chat group that Fiona was coming to the funeral her response was “OMG – Moriarty!!”  As children we went to Fiona’s birthday parties each year until we were old enough to get out of going to them.  Because Fiona is an only child her Mum, who was a teacher, used to invite some of the children from the class she taught to the party as well as Fiona’s special friends, and us. One of the party games I dreaded was called Moriarty.  One child (usually the largest and strongest boy) was chosen, was blindfolded and given a cosh made of a roll of newspapers.  We all had to lie on our stomachs on one side of the living room. Those of us without the cosh and blindfold had to crawl on our stomachs to the other side of the room without being caught.  The one with the cosh bellowed “Are you there, Moriarty?” and then lay about him with the newspapers thumping anyone who got within his reach.  This terrified me and I did my best to get up against any wall or underneath the furniture until the danger was over.

One of my nieces started a couple of JustGiving sites for two of Mum’s favourite charities, Marie Curie and The Sailors Society and we have been very touched by the amount of money people have donated and by the lovely comments people have made on the sites.

I hope to get back to blogging properly again some time in the near future, probably in the new year.  In the mean time, thank you all for sticking with me and following my blog despite the silence from me.  I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!