For the last few years of her life, I looked after my mother all by myself. Her sisters, and my sister, wanted to poke their noses in occasionally, but the fact is that none of them lifted a finger to help. Even when they offered to have her to stay for a while, it meant I had to put myself out, arrange all the transport, or drive her hundreds of miles myself, just to ease their consciences for a week or so.
She was always hard work. I mean, even before the Alzheimer’s set in; even before my father died, our relationship was never easy, but she was my mum, and in the end, I did what I had to do. She had her own house until the very last years, and then we had to put her in a home. Of course, it was hard to make that decision, but she was becoming a liability. She could no longer look after herself, the neighbours were finding her in the street in her nightie, and she’d come round to our house at all time, staring in the windows with big eyes, telling everyone I wouldn’t let her come to live with us.
Well of course I wouldn’t, we really don’t have the facilities to look after a sick old lady, so a home was the only option. At the time she went in, she’d had a little fall, cracked a hip, and it was felt that she should go straight from the hospital to somewhere that she could get constant care. My kids wanted her to go somewhere a bit more upmarket, but there wasn’t a place immediately available in any of the posher homes in our town, so we found her a room in a place nearby. Seedy, my daughter described it as, at her funeral. Well, she didn’t have the trouble of sorting it all out, and anyway, the sort of place they would have liked cost an arm and a leg, and I didn’t want all her savings to be eaten up in expenses.
You probably know, Alzheimer’s is a horrible disease. Mum remained aware of her own deterioration until quite a late stage, and it just put her in a foul mood all the time. She gave us a hard time when we went to see her, and then when we left, she whined that we were leaving her. She spent the rest of the time telling people that we never visited, and of course that slowly turned out to be true. I tried to see her once a week, but it was just too painful for me.
And all this time, I was the sole signatory on her bank account, and I knew exactly how many hundreds of thousands she had in there, and I never touched a penny, over and above what was needed to do her administration. I kept scrupulous books; no-one can accuse me of fiddling her. I was on the bread-line, for some years even before she went into the home, but I never took any for myself. Except if we were entertaining her sister, or something, of course. But that was justifiable. And I stopped her standing orders into the kids’ accounts, because I think she would have felt they no longer needed it by now; it was really just to help them through university, and the youngest graduated nearly ten years ago.
Her final illness was short, and we all saw it coming. The whole family descended on me, all vying for the bed in my spare room, all trying to say what should be said and done at her funeral. Well of course I wouldn’t let them get involved; it’s not like I was celebrating, but you know, I’d had all the trouble of caring for her up to now, and it seemed right that I finish the job. That’s all.
Now I’m waiting for the solicitors and accountants to wind up her estate. There’s going to be a fair bit, and I’m glad that I was so careful with her money, all those years. It will be divided equally between me and my sister, which actually seems a bit unfair, because she doesn’t exactly need it; she’s never been poor, and it’s not like she ever helped me out. But that’s what the will says. I am waiting on tenterhooks for the paperwork to be pushed through; I want that money! I am going to retire, for one thing; and then I am going to go on a cruise. It’s going to be over a hundred thousand, and that will do me, won’t it?
I know it sounds a bit heartless and calculating, and of course I’m sad that mum’s gone, but she had a good long life, and she’s back with my dad now, and she was tired. If she’d been able to tell you, she’d have said she was ready to go. And she always said she couldn’t take it with her.