It would have been my mums 90th birthday today, having been born in 1933. Here she is a few years ago with dad in a lovely image of them both taken by Kate mums long term carer.
However this time last year I was at the South Tyneside Hospital where mum had been taken a few days before from her care home. She was dying, her body simply giving up. I recall a year ago sitting in her hospital room, the nurses had placed her birthday cards on the windowsill and we sat with mum for a while. By this point mum couldn't communicate at all, just lay there looking less than comfortable in a strange bed in a strange room. End of life is never dignified.
We of course went through the motions and wished her Happy Birthday, I hope she could hear this at least, but there was no recollection or recognition from her. One of the cards, from a life long friend of mum's, had written inside it "I hope you're having a lovely day". it struck me as so odd reading this while mum's body slowly shut down. Maybe mum was having a lovely day relishing the end to the suffering following her stroke eighteen months earlier. It is always difficult to know what to say in such circumstances.
Just a couple of days later on November 1st at 00:30hrs mum passed away on a very stormy night. I'm thinking about mum today, Olga Pollard Johnson as she was before marriage. For the first time in my fifty nine years as her son, I can't send her a card or wish her Happy Birthday. She was a one off, a force of nature, and of course, my mum.
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