In memory of Mum

I'm doing a 26-mile walking marathon in the Lake District to raise money for Alzheimer's Research.

Just Giving: https://www.justgiving.com/team/FrancesandNadz

Dementia is a terrible illness. It destroys people’s personality as well as their health, and breaks the hearts of their families and friends.

I watched this happen to my mother, Joy Cooke. I saw what it did to my father. And for me, the disintegration of my mother’s personality was painful beyond belief. So many times I thought “I must tell Mum about that”, only to remember that she was no longer the clever, opinionated woman I had known. I did not know if she understood what I was talking about. She never replied, or gave any indication that she had understood. And she didn’t laugh at jokes any more. She didn’t even know who I was.

Mum was an amazing person. In addition to bringing up four children, she devoted much of her life to caring for the elderly. She transformed Melvin Hall in Penge from a social club and meals on wheels service into a fully-fledged day centre providing a comprehensive range of services. Despite deteriorating health, she ran the centre full time on an entirely voluntary basis until my father Frank retired in 1998, when she was 68 and he 65. Then she handed over the centre to a new, paid manager, who ran it until it closed in 2016 after Bromley Council pulled the funding. Mum never knew it had closed.

Mum and Dad retired to the village of Minster on the Isle Of Sheppey: Mum, to do the garden - she loved gardening and was an extremely knowledgeable and competent horticulturalist - and Dad, to sail a boat. Mum got herself elected to Minster Parish council and ran Minster in Bloom, a floral decoration competition for local shops and businesses.

Mum had various health problems, including cardiomyopathy, COPD and osteoporosis. In 2013, she fell and broke her hip. Medway Hospital operated to pin the hip back together, then put her on a morphine drip in recovery. But unbeknown to the orthopods, she had a history of renal failure. She was unable to clear the morphine from her body, and suffered an overdose. It nearly killed her.

Shortly afterwards, she began having “absences”. She would suddenly tail off in the middle of a conversation and go blank. These were not epileptic seizures: they turned out to be the start of an extremely aggressive form of dementia. Did the morphine overdose trigger it? We don’t know. To this day, little is known about what causes dementia. That’s why we need research.

Mum’s mental disturbances rapidly grew worse. She was unable to go through the physiotherapy needed to get her walking again after the hip operation, so was confined to a wheelchair. Her sleep became badly disturbed. Within a few months she was doubly incontinent. She rarely spoke, and when I visited, she looked at me blankly.

My father managed to care for her at home for a year. But the house was unsafe for a physically disabled woman with advanced dementia, and he became more and more tired. Eventually he admitted he couldn’t cope, and found her a care home. Then he built his life around going to see her twice a week, and paying the bills, which were considerably more than his pension. He laughingly said “I reckon I have five years until I have to sell the house”. But I saw the toll it took on him. When the NHS took over the funding of her care in the last year of her life, it was as if a weight had been lifted off him.

Very early on, Mum forgot my father and me, though she remembered other family members such as her youngest granddaughter. My father became “the man who brought her flowers.” And she thought I was her sister. On one occasion I turned up at the care home as the residents were eating cake. Mum turned to a staff member and said, “We need another plate and fork for my sister.” I laughed, and gently reminded her that I was her daughter. But it hurt.

Right up to the end, my father hoped Mum would recover her memory. But she never did.

Mum died in May 2017. We laid her body to rest in a natural burial centre. Gardener that she was, she wanted a “green” burial long before anyone had heard of such a thing.

Mum warned from the mid-1980s onwards that dementia was becoming an increasing problem among the elderly and research was urgently needed. But at that time, no-one was listening. Eventually, it got her too.

Now, dementia is widespread, just as Mum predicted. Families are being torn apart everywhere. We urgently need research to find a cure, or better a prevention, for this terrible illness.

In Mum’s memory, and in honour of her work with the elderly, I am raising funds for Alzheimer’s Research. Last year, I walked the full circuit of Ullswater in the Lake District, a distance of 26 miles in one of the most beautiful places in Britain - see the picture at the head of this post. Mum and Dad loved the Lake District, and as a child I spent happy holidays there.

On 1st June, I will repeat this walk, accompanied by my daughter Nadia (Nadz). It will be an act of remembrance as well as a fundraising event.

If you would like to contribute to the fundraiser, here’s the link to the Just Giving page for Frances and Nadz.

https://www.justgiving.com/team/FrancesandNadz

UPDATE: We’ve sailed past our original target of £2,000, so a MASSIVE THANK YOU to everyone who has contributed! But the walk is still two weeks away, and it would be wonderful to raise even more money. So if you are able, please give generously.

Because I am raising funds for charity, there are no subscribe buttons on this page. But do please share this post.

Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.

Just Giving: https://www.justgiving.com/team/FrancesandNadz