As I am making these blog notes about me & my family i'm thinking about what family history is. How one thing or another gets set down as story and how other things don't. What is noteworthy ? And what isn't ? A history is not a novel and yet each person's life may read like a novel, may read well as a novel, or not, depending on who is writing/telling it. 

What triggers these thoughts ? I started out on the family history path after seeing my mum in hospital. A mother is a key figure in a person's life, even an absent mother makes a mark by her absence. My mother is very far from absent. She is a person whose body within the wheel likes to be close to the hub. Seeing her now in reduced circumstances, struggling to get up from a chair, sliding her feet forward inch by inch so slow it took her close to an hour to walk 10ft from the loo & she need a wheelchair for the last 5ft is humbling & shocking. She is in some ways still close to the hub but as a vulnerable person whose needs her family are gathering around rather than as someone ordering events.

A family history written when bones are dry doesn't hold the little things. The journeys my sister & I take to see our mum. She in a car bearing the things my mother has asked her to bring, a battery wireless, optrex, lactulose, her herbal sleep pills, the t-shirt with the dove on it. My journeys to see her in Dereham hospital on foot & by the "super 8" bus, the walk to stand A at the bus station, the ride to Dereham market place, the walk up theatre street & cemetery road,  past the church & the cemetery, the school & the water tower to the edge of town where country roads beckon where i turn in to the hospital gates & say my "hello" to the people standing, waiting, to guide others to the Covid vaccination centre, I go to Foxley Ward, sometimes i have to wait if i'm early, & it is peaceful with birdsong, I wash my hands, mask up, sign in and walk the corridors to see mum who is frail & weary, sometimes better than i hope, sometimes worse. In a room on her own & then in a ward with three others. Their faces, their being briefly imprinted on my being along with the image of mum sleeping, looking pale with her mouth open. 

Now she is in a rehab care home in Costessey. No bus now, i just walk, it takes just over an hour, i'm a reasonably good walker & it seems to take less long now i know where i'm going. The care home is ok. The care home is good. The staff are mostly nice & some are lovely. Her room is painted warm soft orange & has a wardrobe, chest of drawers & an en-suite bathroom. The window looks out on a wall empty tarmac but it is a large window so the room is light & the wall doesn't block her view of the sky. She hates her bed which is a hospital bed, rubber for cleanliness. She hated the air bed she had in Dereham too. I think beds may be a suffering for her now. This is bad because her legs & feet are swollen. They look so sore they are hard to see. I massage her feet & legs when i visit, it changes nothing, they are still swollen after i've touched them. And i give her arms & hands contact too. We talk about this and that, sometimes we talk to the carers if they come in for this & that. They have to juggle the needs of all their residents & like mothers of many children can only give what there is time to give. 

 I give these details because this stuff gets lost. I should name names, or speak of the gate that sells plants at the entrance to the road, Grays Fair, that mum's care home is on, or mention the red shoes i picked up from a skip on the way home on my second visit, red shoes ? or ruby slippers ? Hans Anderson's red shoes ? or Wizard of Oz, "there's no place like home", shoes ? Maybe both, as symbols red shoes run deep in today's culture. 

And what of my mum ? Sometimes i visit & i think is this it ? Is my mum dying ? But i think she is not, or rather she is, as we all are, but that she has life yet to live. But, oh my mum, it is hard this life she has now. I never thought my mum would be in a care home. What is this care home thing but being with her & seeing what people who work in care homes do I see the skill in their jobs. My mum doesn't quite trust me to be strong enough to help her up out of her chair. How could i care for her at home if I can't help her move herself ? This is without even putting in the "have i got the patience & strength of spirit & body to hold her in these last weeks, months, years of her life ?" question. I search & I find even those things wanting in me if i am honest. Its a hard truth, for me, & for my mum who i think feels some times like Lear abandoned or maybe that is a projection i've cast on her born from the guilt i carry because of my inadequacies, my not being able to make life good for her. Because bodies wear out, maybe our old make us fearful because we see ourselves in their bodies, our future, the shame that comes with needing help to go to the loo, get washed, get dressed, even eat or drink. I think sometimes that, tho i loved Jon & would wish him still living, his death spared him the indignity of living in an old body. I think he would have hated being old. I think i will not like it either.