My mum died in Spring 2007, aged 94. We held a cremation service at Sheffield's Hutcliffe Wood. I got the deeds of the family plot in Hull's Chanterlands Avenue Cemetery transferred to my name. Then we took the ashes over and held a family memorial service in the chapel there. I arranged for the wording on the headstone to be updated with my father's and mother's details. Crown Memorials (Hull) did what they'd promised, and sent me a certificate. But I'd never made the opportunity to go and inspect the finished product. It was one of those sometime-I-must-get-round-to-it bucket jobs. My cousin June keeps the plot tidy.
The sequence of events is interesting by which my mum came to spend her last eight years in Sheffield. In the late 1990's I was driving over to Hull every other Wednesday to take her out shopping, go to the bank and generally make sure she was okay. And to share fish and chips at Hessle Foreshore, under the Humber Bridge. She was living in Lees Houses, a substantial leafy-suburbs charitably-based complex of 120 independent flats. She'd moved there in 1984, three years after my dad died. Throughout 1999, workmen were stripping out and replacing the asbestos insulation of the Houses' district heating system (an advanced concept for properties built around 1910). Mum gave anxious accounts of the workmen having helped themselves to margarine from her fridge or having moved things around in the airing cupboard. It was the classic confabulation by which we produce a 'why' story when slips of memory leave us unable to provide a consistent thread of explanation for events as we find them.
Visiting in the September, the Warden took Mary and I to one side. She explained that they'd found my mother in a state of confused distress trying to put some soiled bedsheets through the washing machine. "I know she's been making up stories..." I offered. "No," the Warden was firm. "This is the onset of dementia, and you need to plan for it." She then summarised the stages of denial, distress and accommodation that form the recognised pattern of progression.
For Mum, it also meant she'd lose her tenancy, as her personal decline would carry her into the need for residential care. "As it happens, she's spoken of possibly moving to Sheffield, because she can see she's become dependent on us, now," I added. Within twenty minutes, we had a game plan. The Warden would get Mum properly medically assessed. I would arrange to take out Enduring Power of Attorney, and we would look for a place in a Residential Home. Mum, unaware, complied.
Mum was registered blind, having lost the sight in her right eye aged eight through an accident that caused a detached retina. These days, it would be routine to sort it out. She suffered the disability all her life, and a bodged cataract operation nearly cost her the residual vision in her 'good' eye. Over Xmas 1999 she came to stay. I arranged for her to visit the Royal Sheffield Society for the Blind's Cairn Home residential unit, just over a mile from us. On enquiry, Hull's equivalent facility had closed down. She got on famously. We agreed to put her name on 'the list', while the staff checked her eligibility as an out-of-towner. "Mind you," they warned, "She's number 17. And we've only had four vacancies come up in the last ten years." No matter, it was progress, and we sensed a lot of grace in the whole sequence of events.
In March 2000, Cairn Home rang. "This is a long shot. A place has come up, and we've been turned down by the the first 12 people on our list. Would Mum be interested?" Would she!? We moved her to Sheffield a month later. Viv came over from York Uni to help, including, I remember, sliding her large wardrobe out through the first floor window.
"I suppose it would be nice to spend a bit of time together..." I'd mused to Mary in August, "Y'know, before I go to India. We could go to see the grave, and have fish and chips under the Humber Bridge," I added hopefully. But the only suitable day was a Saturday, and the Cemetery wouldn't be open. Then last week, Andrzej tracked me down to where I was trying to read some Jesus Centre stuff in quiet. "I'm trying to arrange for someone to cover Mary's Help Desk slot tomorrow, so you can get some time together." "Did you know about this?" I asked her shortly after. I confess, I don't take kindly to folks organising me into 'quality time' scenarios.
We left at 10.00am next morning. It was hazy and overcast, and I predicted it would only get worse nearer the East coast, whereas Mary was sure the sun could just break through at any time. Once on the M18, Mary asked me what had changed me on the Multiply trip.
In Hull, we threaded our way to the Cemetery through road closures and lane resurfacing . The detour included Westbourne Avenue's cast iron mermaids that I ran into as a novice driver. The family grave stands in a prime position near the wrought iron entrance gates. My grandfather had secured it when he worked as a supervisor for the Council Parks Department. He lost his right hand in WWI, and had a war pension, too. Everything looked fine. I spotted one headstone that looked like a cherub on a space hopper. Mary, observing the silver birches afflicted with fungus, announced that she'd like the one in our back garden taken down, because it blocks out too much light.
We bought some fish and chips from the shop where I used to go 'as a lad'. As I expected, from the Foreshore carpark we could barely see to the far bank of the estuary. When Mary's brother Tony rang, she chirped, "The sun's just about to break through."
After a walk, we headed home. I was due to go to a business consultation meeting with with Paul Blomfield, our MP. I'd read an article in Abu Dhabi about the disproportionate effect on GDP of mega cities and city regions. "Look at this," I'd explained to Mary, "Six years, and between Hull and Sheffield there's been nothing more than a couple of new sheds (meaning warehouse units) and a new roundabout. And as for airports..." I fear that Humberside and South Yorkshire's not in the running as a 'top 600 places of global economic influence', despite our Council's glowing rhetoric in their ten-year Strategy Plan. Mary bore with my comments silently. I probably need another day off.
The sequence of events is interesting by which my mum came to spend her last eight years in Sheffield. In the late 1990's I was driving over to Hull every other Wednesday to take her out shopping, go to the bank and generally make sure she was okay. And to share fish and chips at Hessle Foreshore, under the Humber Bridge. She was living in Lees Houses, a substantial leafy-suburbs charitably-based complex of 120 independent flats. She'd moved there in 1984, three years after my dad died. Throughout 1999, workmen were stripping out and replacing the asbestos insulation of the Houses' district heating system (an advanced concept for properties built around 1910). Mum gave anxious accounts of the workmen having helped themselves to margarine from her fridge or having moved things around in the airing cupboard. It was the classic confabulation by which we produce a 'why' story when slips of memory leave us unable to provide a consistent thread of explanation for events as we find them.
Visiting in the September, the Warden took Mary and I to one side. She explained that they'd found my mother in a state of confused distress trying to put some soiled bedsheets through the washing machine. "I know she's been making up stories..." I offered. "No," the Warden was firm. "This is the onset of dementia, and you need to plan for it." She then summarised the stages of denial, distress and accommodation that form the recognised pattern of progression.
For Mum, it also meant she'd lose her tenancy, as her personal decline would carry her into the need for residential care. "As it happens, she's spoken of possibly moving to Sheffield, because she can see she's become dependent on us, now," I added. Within twenty minutes, we had a game plan. The Warden would get Mum properly medically assessed. I would arrange to take out Enduring Power of Attorney, and we would look for a place in a Residential Home. Mum, unaware, complied.
Mum was registered blind, having lost the sight in her right eye aged eight through an accident that caused a detached retina. These days, it would be routine to sort it out. She suffered the disability all her life, and a bodged cataract operation nearly cost her the residual vision in her 'good' eye. Over Xmas 1999 she came to stay. I arranged for her to visit the Royal Sheffield Society for the Blind's Cairn Home residential unit, just over a mile from us. On enquiry, Hull's equivalent facility had closed down. She got on famously. We agreed to put her name on 'the list', while the staff checked her eligibility as an out-of-towner. "Mind you," they warned, "She's number 17. And we've only had four vacancies come up in the last ten years." No matter, it was progress, and we sensed a lot of grace in the whole sequence of events.
In March 2000, Cairn Home rang. "This is a long shot. A place has come up, and we've been turned down by the the first 12 people on our list. Would Mum be interested?" Would she!? We moved her to Sheffield a month later. Viv came over from York Uni to help, including, I remember, sliding her large wardrobe out through the first floor window.
"I suppose it would be nice to spend a bit of time together..." I'd mused to Mary in August, "Y'know, before I go to India. We could go to see the grave, and have fish and chips under the Humber Bridge," I added hopefully. But the only suitable day was a Saturday, and the Cemetery wouldn't be open. Then last week, Andrzej tracked me down to where I was trying to read some Jesus Centre stuff in quiet. "I'm trying to arrange for someone to cover Mary's Help Desk slot tomorrow, so you can get some time together." "Did you know about this?" I asked her shortly after. I confess, I don't take kindly to folks organising me into 'quality time' scenarios.
We left at 10.00am next morning. It was hazy and overcast, and I predicted it would only get worse nearer the East coast, whereas Mary was sure the sun could just break through at any time. Once on the M18, Mary asked me what had changed me on the Multiply trip.
In Hull, we threaded our way to the Cemetery through road closures and lane resurfacing . The detour included Westbourne Avenue's cast iron mermaids that I ran into as a novice driver. The family grave stands in a prime position near the wrought iron entrance gates. My grandfather had secured it when he worked as a supervisor for the Council Parks Department. He lost his right hand in WWI, and had a war pension, too. Everything looked fine. I spotted one headstone that looked like a cherub on a space hopper. Mary, observing the silver birches afflicted with fungus, announced that she'd like the one in our back garden taken down, because it blocks out too much light. We bought some fish and chips from the shop where I used to go 'as a lad'. As I expected, from the Foreshore carpark we could barely see to the far bank of the estuary. When Mary's brother Tony rang, she chirped, "The sun's just about to break through."
After a walk, we headed home. I was due to go to a business consultation meeting with with Paul Blomfield, our MP. I'd read an article in Abu Dhabi about the disproportionate effect on GDP of mega cities and city regions. "Look at this," I'd explained to Mary, "Six years, and between Hull and Sheffield there's been nothing more than a couple of new sheds (meaning warehouse units) and a new roundabout. And as for airports..." I fear that Humberside and South Yorkshire's not in the running as a 'top 600 places of global economic influence', despite our Council's glowing rhetoric in their ten-year Strategy Plan. Mary bore with my comments silently. I probably need another day off.
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