Mum’s friend, Joyce, is in hospital and I visited her yesterday. 

Mum and Joyce. They met, and served together, in the Second World War and they kept in touch for the rest of their lives. They lived 240 miles apart for most of that time:  meetings were rare; letters went steadily up and down the length of the country.

Each was widowed, and then mum died. Joyce continued to live independently, at an address I knew by heart from seeing it so often on the envelopes of the letters mum sent. Her daughter is a remarkable support, and she has grown-up grandchildren, plus an increasing number of great-grandchildren, who visit. However, they all live a good hour’s drive away and, when we were in Hampshire, I lived nearer. It seemed obvious to me that I should visit, but I didn’t, and felt guilty about my neglect.

I couldn’t understand my own inaction and I recognise, now, those were complex times, much more difficult than I was conscious of. I lived in a sort of apparently rational but emotionally ineffective brain sludge. This paralysis was largely something I had been infected by, not created in myself, although I think it also connected with my shame that I hadn’t been better at caring for mum. It had been hard – it is hard – to have to make plans for someone’s care (oh that mealy-mouthed ambiguous word!) based on my own lack of capacity. Perhaps I feared to glimpse in Auntie Joyce a projection of the disappointment I felt about myself.

In 2022, when I lived alone for a while, this lifted. My emotions were liberated and my decision-making capacity returned. I did what I wanted to do. I took flowers and biscuits and we looked at photos of mum and Auntie Joyce told me about the foxes in her garden. Since then I have visited perhaps twice a year, and both the children have seen her as well. I am the beneficiary of this far more than she is, but perhaps it is also one of those small and precious situations where everyone wins. Although we do not speak of her much, we meet in memory of Pat, who was Joyce’s dear friend as well as being my mum. She is the link and we reforge her by our meeting. 

Because I lack faith, I do not have a model for what happens after death. But from this mortal perspective, as it were, I find it hard to believe people are completely gone while they remain in others’ consciousness. While I remember my mum. While my brother and I can talk about her. While my children still recall her. But I only remember mum from when she was in her forties; the children only in her seventies. Auntie Joyce is a bright shining link right back into mum’s past. She has memories which keep mum alive at 21. I visit as if to warm my hands at a blazing fire.

I know this cannot last. Auntie Joyce has already lived longer than most. Just occasionally, the weariness shows, and she is growing frail. I know each visit may be – is more likely to be – the last. Mum would know what to say to that.  If it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all. 

Each parting is more poignant, but so is each ‘hello’ more joyous.  Within those sparking synapses (and there is no doubt that Auntie Joyce’s synapses are still sparking) is a consciousness shaped, in part, by interactions with mum. This is someone who laughed with her – and watched theatre, and listened to music – and argued with her, and made up, and wept with her and laughed again. They made each other laugh a lot. They were great gigglers. I am selfish. I want Auntie Joyce to keep living because she gives me that link.  She is my Sonnet 18, as long as she lives: she gives life to mum.