I found an entry in my diary, which sheds light on Mum’s final days, and which provides, perhaps some hope.
Mum had cognitive issues in her later years, and, whilst I had recorded her words extensively before her admission to the Manor, there was little there that she could add to the record. As late as 5 January, however, she was still relating memories that made some sense. My comments below are in square brackets.
On that day, I called in the morning, and took her down to sit in the hall (the sitting room having been commandeered by the management for a meeting), and then to wheel her into the dining room. She talked in both hall and dining room.
Mum talked about her cousin Frank, who she had known when she was 5 years old and he 7. After she met JPJB [1946] Frank had a good job, but ended up in Liverpool [and in some difficulties there]. Frank’s mother Aunty May and his grandfather did not know where Frank was, but Mum had found out through nuns [this must have been in the late 1940s]. She recalled seeing him in Walton Hospital with her cousin Annette [I was there too, and poor Uncle Frank was dying from a very large tumour. This was in 1985].
Her cousin Annette did not know where her own sister Josie was, but thought she was working in a boarding school [a story I had heard before/].
She confirmed the reasons why her sister was not pleased about her marriage to Joe [best left private].
She had watched the Promenade being made [early 1930s], and referred to something about the grass parts in front of the promenade [I think it was that these were sands that were covered by rubble excavated from the first Mersey Road Tunnel]..
Frank lived in the next road [true – in 1939 he and his mother and grandfather were living in 33 Denton Drive, and Mum in Hale Road]. Mum said that she went to school in January when she was still only four, but nearly five [actually, it seems to have been five, nearly six, by another account of hers].
This would have been seen as mere ramblings by someone who did not know about Mum and her family, but I write it down because it was very close to what Mum had said in the past. I wrote in my diary “Not rubbish at all”. And, very poignant now, “She looked better today, more like her old self, and when I left she gave me a wave of recognition.” I always knew that there would be a last time that she would know me, and this was among the last times that she said things that could be corroborated. It is noteworthy, however, that what she said made sense, despite at least three years of cognitive problems. I wonder now what else went through her mind, but which she was, perhaps, unable to communicate.
Joan Boughey Recalled 