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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That is quite a memorial she had built, I would love to see it in person one day. Bet they would get a kick out of Albertopolis!
ReplyDeleteWouldn't it make a great title for a book?
DeleteWe were all around this, but managed to miss it. A little too far south when we were at the Science Museum. A little too far north when we were in Kensington Gardens because we were focused on tracking down the Peter Pan statue and checking out The Orangery.
ReplyDeleteFunny! We found the Peter Pan statue but missed the Orangery completely!
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