Twelve Golden Gifts

Trigger warning: Please note that the following blog post talks about late-stage dementia and death. Please do not read on if you don't want to.

It’s been nearly three years since I’ve posted on this blog.

I look over the last blog piece, which celebrates Mum bringing joy into our lives.

I scroll through the posts, and the photos, and the articles inspired by Mum. Looking over these brings a knot to my throat.

What to say about the past three years? Mum’s health declined as her dementia progressed. She had several falls. She broke her hip. She spent time in rehab but couldn’t walk again. She went into residential care. And then we moved her to another care facility. On 26 October, 2023, she passed away.

The facts go in a straight line. I state them here in a few short lines. But the emotional trajectory of that time, and the time afterwards as our family grieved, didn’t travel in a straight line. It went up and down, sideways and downwards.

Writing for me has always been about processing what I see around me, and a way to manage big emotions. Writing during Mums’ illness was a way of maintaining my sanity so that I could walk along side her as mindfully and bravely as I could. I wrote words on receipts after seeing her, in my phone in the small hours of the morning when I couldn’t sleep, and in my laptop as a way of processing often challenging experiences when things went wrong. When Mum’s words disappeared as she sunk further into the murky world of dementia, I had to find more words to advocate on her behalf in emails to clinical managers, and to chronical the tragedy of losing her bit by bit. On her passing, I wrote to honour her life by way of eulogy. As time went on, I kept writing as a way of alleviating the messy feelings of guilt on what I might have done better to protect her during her greatest time of need.

Through my words, I found my way back to her, to the time before she got ill, a time when her giggle could set anyone off around her. A time when she would cook honeyed donuts at the drop of a hat when friends and family arrived at her doorstep. A time when she would have a coffee on and the conversation going even before you could protest that you were just passing by.

I started to collate all these words as a way of celebrating memories of Mum. A way of keeping her generosity and spirit alive. I felt that if these words could help even one person feel less alone as they accompanied someone towards the end of their life, then it would be worth sharing them. And so I wrote the memoir Twelve Golden Gifts.

This book is a tribute to my mother. It’s a love letter, a lament. But above all, it’s a celebration of the many gifts Mum gave my family and I during her very special life.

Through it, I hope that Mum can keep bringing joy.