Alzheimer’s being the conniving thieving bitch that it is, my mother wasn’t herself in the final years of her life. The woman I visited in the Alzheimer’s special care unit was a stranger wearing my mother’s skin but not much else, like the invasion of the body snatchers had taken place, month after month beneath the surface, until one day we looked and the woman we knew was gone, replaced by some alien being. An imposter. Intruder alert. Intruder alert. She died back in 2012. Don’t worry; I won’t be getting maudlin on you. My real mother–not that stranger in a wheel chair, head nodding on her shoulder–is who I want to think about today. My real mother —Enid Maude Good nee Hayden, a prim, old-fashioned name, perhaps the only thing about her I didn’t love— was British-born and had a lovely London lilt to her voice her whole life even though she left England in the mid-1950’s. I suppose at thirty, her vocal patterns were already frozen in place. Sounding like a cross between
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Love this! I'm not British, so I gamely call myself an Anglophile. Since our trip to England last year, we've invested in a good electric kettle and drink tea all of the time. I think I'll go put the kettle on, now!
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