1414 – Creative Flow

I’ve been feeling anxious about writing in this blog but finally ‘pulled my finger out’ and ‘grew some’. Seeing mum go through her dementia journey and recently dealing with my own mental health battles has been very challenging. I’ve experienced sadness, impotence, guilt, more guilt, resentment, confusion and fear and sometimes all these emotions all at once too at the strange and disconcerting role reversal, having to mother your mother as a result of Dementia. Yeh that’s right I still get all those emotions to this day. Mummy and my sisters have always been the centre of my universe. My rocks, my safety net, always there to pick me up and hold me when I couldn’t hold myself up. Mummy was so brave; she would confront and scare the ‘bogeyman’ away so I could sleep in my own bed. That is my mother Petronella even to this day as she battles dementia. Forever that strong driven matriarch that is Miyanda. Still holding us all together.

As the middle child and unapologetic about it too , I was always close to mum. The last few years have not been easy.  I miss my mother so much. With Covid Pandemic etc. it is fast approaching nearly ten years since I been home to mummy. Thanks to technology I still get to speak to her frequently. At the moment to mum I am “chembchie” (her plumb sensitive tomboy middle child) and I am lapping it up, trusssss mi!! It’s been therapeutic for the both of us and has helped me re-establish the relationship I thought I had lost with my mother. The relationship that Dementia stole, well at least that’s how I looked at it in the past hence the anger and resentment. Now though things have changed innit, gotta make lemonade outta my lemons rude gyal! Lol. Oh boy have I come a long way, gone are the days I’d spend the whole time just sobbing on the phone and telling mummy I want to come back home lol. I regress when I speak to mummy (yeh I said that with my chest!) and she has time for me and fills me with so much love every time we talk. Mummy’s virtual hugs and a strong brew always do the trick for me. Every time I’ve spoken to mum she has patiently listened and let me cry, sob and scream without judging me or invalidating my emotions. We’ve grown and learnt so much about each other.

I had the pleasure of watching the latest digital remake of the movie Death on the Nile which is based on the 1937 novel by Agatha Christie. Listen before you even say anything yeh, mummy was a librarian and as children every Saturday we made a trip to the local library as part of our weekly Saturday day out. We’d come home excited with Agatha Christie books, some Nancy Drew, the famous five and obviously a few Asterix and Obelix comics, shoot I even remember getting TinTin and Archie Comics too but that’s a blog for another day lol. The first time I watched DotN (abbreviated cause I “work smart” ) I must have been about 8 years old. It’s was a ‘dabbed’ VHS tape of the movie mum had recorded off British Television (BBC to be precise) whilst she was away at university in Glasgow. Disclaimer: this was pre DVD CDROM Laserdisc LimeWire etc. and is not piracy (good luck Ganz and above knowing what dem tings der are lol – unapologetically not going to explain.

I remember mum returning from her trip abroad with all these cool VHS movies, Car Wash the original, Grease the movie, Terminator 1(I still have nightmares from when terminator just wouldn’t die no matter how hard Sarah Connor hit him….had me anxiety levels on high, peak fam! I digress, my bad.), Ben-Hur the movie, which we watched every year Christmas and Easter without fail. During my last chat with Mummy, I reminded both her and Amanda about this. I was curious about how mummy managed to balance being a single mum to 3 girls, and irking full time and still finding time and energy to spend quality time at the library or at home watching movies by the fire place. Ahhh!! Good times! Just that memory alone makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. So I asked mummy, just how she managed all that without burning out. It’s global Mental Health awareness week and I was keen to learn the secret to her success. How did she manage to remain present, what drove her? What kept her going? And why?

TBC

See part 2

This movie always brings a smile to my face as I think about my mother.