Thursday 10th February 2022

Every morning I post pictures of churches to a group on Facebook and then to my Twitter feed, the shots downloaded from my Flickr account. Sometimes the description on my Flickr page under the shots isn't good enough, so I look at my blog post for that day.

Which is how I cam upon my last meeting with my Mother.

Mum.

It was July 2019, some nine weeks before she died, the local authority had found her a place at a care home, she just had to decide she wanted to go. After initially signalling that she would go, she had changed her mind and so I went up to try, one last time, to talk some sense into her.

Her cleaner, an ex-nurse, had said she knew Mum didn't have long and was fading, as she recognised it from a decade of her clients passing.

It was last change saloon. Although I had thought for years, with each heart attack or a heavy fall would be the end, she bounced back. Her last heart attack, very serious, resulted in a triple bypass, but should have given Mum a new lease of life with the energy to get up and go.

She chose to stay in and smoke, and instead used the carers as folks to talk to. She started smoking again, and barely walked at all.

Four hours to drive up, six hours to drive back. It was a long day, made bearable by visiting an orchid meadow in west Suffolk and the nearby church which was open.

The point to all this is that I had forgotten this trip. I had no memory of going up to see her before she died, just receiving the news on 26th September that she was critically ill. What else do we forget?

It brought to the surface, decades of frustration with Mum just giving up. We see Jools' sister doing pretty much the same thing. In the end, it is/was their life, if they want to sit in a chair 23 hours a day, then they can, but there is a cost. In the end. You always have to pay the ferryman.

It will be three years this year she has gone, and 26 for Dad.

Many of my friends on FB still have one or both of their parents. Mum at least should still be here, and could have been. Had she wanted.

Life goes on.

In the end, Thursday was a good day.

Very good day.

Even if Jools was up and about at five, I was concerned it was like the day before when I was woken at gone six, so I get up. It was ten past five. But Jools had lots of work to do, so she was gone fairly quickly, leaving me with a podcast and toast.

I now cut the bread so thin for toast, once grilled it is like a cracker. This is because when I was a kid, we went on holiday and they cut bread so thin it too became like a cracker. I once got Mum to cut the Mother's Pride so thin it did too, but just the once, she wasn't going to do that again.

But with a home baked loaf, you can, and being so thin you can have more than two slices through the day.

Or that's what I tell myself.

So, I have crispy toast with butter and nutella, and a fresh coffee, and start work to prepare for the big meeting.

The big meeting is about my project, when I have to convince my boss and the guardians of the management system to do things my way.

Unscripted, I let rip, explained my changes and why I was doing it this way, and why there should be no local variations.

And after some seven months of saying the same thing, my boss finally got it. And agreed.

I had done it, a crack in the dam, or getting the tanker to turn round, but real change comes with a much smaller one. The principle is set.

Wow.

And due to others being in meetings, I couldn't tell anyone.

Eek.

So I have some more toast to celebrate.

And a fresh brew.

Outside it was another cold and windy day, not worth going out for, not with a camera. And anyway I had jambalaya to make. Something from the course Jools went on before Christmas.

I made the tomato sauce early on, then let it settle and cool so the flavours marinated. Then added the chicken, chorizo, stock and vegetables, mixed them all in with the spices and let sit until five in the evening, when I warmed the pot, added the rice and just before serving, added the shrimp.

And it was good, not without the burnt flavour of the gumbo, which I now may not make the roux quite to dark.

But dinner was good, we eat a good plateful and have enough left over for Jools to take to work for lunch on Friday.

There is football on the radio in the evening, Liverpool v Leicester, so I listen to that until just before ten, and am then done.