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Meeting up for Mother
WE held a family meeting last week. It was a meeting that we would hope never to hold, but there had to be a discussion, and we were the ones to do it.
My mother, who I have written about many times in this column, is approaching her 93rd birthday. She has had a pretty amazing life by anyone's standards, and I, as one of her eight children, hold her in high regard along with her remaining children, my four middle aged brothers.
She was born in 1914 in Hamilton, just as WW1 began. She tells us that she literally slid into the world in her mother's bedroom, whilst her big brother ran for her father, who in his turn ran for the doctor. She was a shy, yet determined little girl. She ditched the former, and hung on to the latter as she matured.
She taught her self to drive, by getting up at 5am, and bumping her brother's car through Hamilton, until she got it right. She has never passed a test, and she never explained to her brother that she knew anything about the strange scratches and dents in his precious automobile.
She studied medicine at Glasgow University, at a time when very few women became doctors; indeed there were only four women in her year. My father came along when she was 27, and as was the way in those days, she gave up her career in order to have her family, and the children came along in pretty quick succession.
Life was incredibly busy for her, and I must admit to my shame that I never truly gave any thought to how hectic it must have been, until I had my own children and I only had three!
She was completely devoted to her family and only returned to work after the youngest child went to school. Then she carved out a career for herself in school health, trotting round the schools with her little team, doing routine medical examinations, and innoculating children against polio and diphtheria etc. She loved that time and carried on working after my father, who was much older, had retired.
Since my father died, she has lived very successfully on her own, making new friends, golfing, playing bridge, doing voluntary work and paying dutiful, generous and equal attention to all of her children and 21 grandchildren. Also, key to her life has been her faith, which she has passed on. She has been supported by it throughout her life, and sought strength from it through all its trials.
She walks to church every morning for the 10 o'clock Mass, and is a well known figure up there. Her faith has sustained her through a major bereavement in every single decade of her life.
In childhood, she said goodbye to a brother, as a teenager to her beloved sister, in her 20s to her father, in her 30s to her baby son, and then to her mother, brothers and other sister, her husband and two daughters. All of these bereavements she has dealt with, with due sadness, but also with love and humour and extraordinary example.
Now though, her memory is failing, and it is becoming clear that she is a little confused between night and day. She is incredibly independent, and is reluctant to ask for help, although she does need support. So we held our meeting.
Normally when we meet up, she is the centre of that meeting, and as she seems to be psychically aware, when something is going on with her chicks, we had to engage in subterfuge.
We met in our youngest brother's house, and tried not to turn it into a party, and stay on task. I facilitated the conversation, and we divided it into sections, with everyone having their say.
It sounds like a formal way of helping our mother, but out of that conversation we have established a rota of phone-calls and visits and email communication between us, so that we are all aware of what is happening, who has seen her and when. She often doesn't remember where she has been, and who she has seen.
Of course ever since the meeting, she has sparkled and glowed, as if trying to prove to us that the last thing she needs is us fussing over her. We do it though, because we love her, and we love the amazing example she has been to us over the years.
Sometimes she drives us mad, but it is these qualities that have brought her with such resilience through the best part of a century. We her children salute her, and love her and treasure each moment that she continues to share life with us on this side of the line.
- Jo Middlemiss is a Personal Life Coach, who lives and works in Edzell. You can contact her on (01356) 648 329.
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Weather for Brechin
Wednesday 08 February 2012
Today
Sunny spells
Temperature: 1 C to 2 C
Wind Speed: 25 mph
Wind direction: South
Tomorrow
Light rain
Temperature: 3 C to 4 C
Wind Speed: 12 mph
Wind direction: South west
