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Fading from view

I was probably most use to my mother in the years when she no longer knew who I was.

by Andy Davis / April 23, 2015 / Leave a comment
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Published in May 2015 issue of Prospect Magazine
Old secret garden with blue doors, red hibiscus

“In the middle of all this activity sat our mother, benign and becalmed by the dementia, gradually fading from view.” © Judywhite/Garden Photos.com

It is a strange feeling to read your parent’s bank statements. Few things in our mother’s final years return to me as strongly as the sense that in doing this we had all crossed a line. No part of her independence would now be protected from the gaze of others, and where once these monthly ledgers had recorded her peculiar, patchwork blend of thrift and generosity, from that moment they became something entirely different: a stark, monochrome reckoning of the relentless arithmetic of old age.

As Easter 2010 approached it became clear that our mother, then aged 85, could no longer live safely in the house she shared with our step-father and that she would have to move into a care home. We—my sister and two older brothers—had known for some time that her dementia would eventually lead us to its door but it was only when this moment came that I began to understand the task that we were taking on. My sister held an enduring power of attorney, which had enabled her to help my mother manage her affairs while she was still living at home and meant that when the time came to move her, we could take control immediately and start to figure out where we would find the money to keep her safe and well cared for as the disease crept over her.

It was then that I first peered into the contents of her bank account. I already knew that she had a teacher’s pension coming in, along with her state pension, and it was clear that she could pay her share of the modest outgoings. What struck me, however, were the direct debits. I counted 27 monthly…

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Comments

  1. Keith A.
    April 26, 2015 at 12:04
    I strongly related to Andy Davis’s article about his mother, particularly about her charitable donations. A couple of years ago I discovered my mother (in her mid-eighties) was paying 10% of her income to the Anglican Church, having been told that she needed to give a tithe or she wouldn’t go to heaven. Given that her State Pension was only £70 a week, I was angry that I was subsidising her so that she could give money that, as she said, didn’t even go to her local church, but was paid to the Diocese 40 miles away in Sheffield. I managed to convince that she had done her bit, and she should concentrate on her own comforts. However last week, when checking her Bank Account, I saw she’d got 3 Direct Debits to national Charities, totalling 8% of her income. I then found in her papers she had a £2,000 Bond with Halifax which had matured in 1999; when I asked what had happened to it, she said she didn’t know [even back then] what “matured” meant (a quick check with Halifax the next day found the funds had been used to open an ISA).

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