I only saved this recently, but already I have forgotten where I picked it up from.
It just rang so true.
We are currently trying to pick out Mum's absolute 'treasures' from the chaos of papers and trinkets that fill her drawers and cupboards.
We have already filled the walls of her new room with her most treasured wall art, her clock, the portrait of my Dad with my youngest son at a couple of weeks old painted by the son in question a few years ago. Family photos, all in multi-frames and labelled neatly with Children, Grand Children, and the final frame Great and Great-Great Grand Children.
Her bathroom is stocked with toiletries from home. Twelve bars of Dove soap anyone ... at least she'll be nice and clean. 😄
Her clothes are all hanging freshly laundered and labelled in her new built-in wardrobe.
We ask her what she would like bringing from the bungalow regularly, but she can't remember what she has and what she loves.
Luckily I have a brilliant memory, although to be honest it is stretched to almost breaking point at the moment, but it means I can pick up most of Mum's things and know where they are from and what they mean to her.
There are my Dad's gardening and table tennis medals, the Derby and Joan garden gnomes, the silk flowers in a vase hand painted by my late Aunty Barbara.
And pride of place has gone to the cookery book that my Dad bought her way back in 1957 when they were first going out. He obviously wanted the girl he was about to propose to, to know the foods that he liked as there is a piece of paper tucked inside with a list of his favourite foods and their page number.
These are all now in residence on one of her windowsills, she doesn't have many surfaces, but those that she does have are filling up with treasure.
I have to recognise that the bits of blank paper, the shopping lists from 2021 and the leaflets that Mum was 'saving' were also special to her, but in a care home room there is not the space to keep those sorts of 'treasures'. Anyway it brought a smile to our faces when we arrived for a visit on Sunday after two full hours of sorting back at her bungalow, to find that my brother had taken the Radio Times and the Saturday newspaper for her the previous day, and someone had just given her a Sunday paper, so she already had a little stash of junk mail and the leaflets that fell from the newspapers and magazine to read through and pile up by her chair.
She will never change ... but then she is my Mum. 💖
Sue xx
It's lovely that your Mum has room for some of her bits and pieces, it must be strange for her - and what a good thing you are closer than you were when in Wales.
ReplyDeleteI never got a chance to sort through my Mums things when she died and only managed to save a couple of things of hers later when my sister cleared the house after Dad died . We were an hour away and sister was next door so she just chucked almost all small things into a skip!
It's a tricky task but sounds like you're making a brilliant job of it.
ReplyDeleteAlison in Wales x
Reading this I'm back in my mil's room at the nursing home.
ReplyDeleteA favourite cushion and throw, a photo of her late husband, trinkets from her dressing table, they all helped to make her feel at ease although we were never sure she felt entirely 'at home' - with dementia it's very hard to tell. But she seemed content and ate well till she passed away 4 years later.
You are taking well care of her. Reminds me of my mother's move from independent living to assisted living and decided what to take. She passed away 11 years ago.
ReplyDelete