Today would have been my Mum’s 100th birthday. Wow!
For those of you who used to enjoy tweeting with her @GIlls_Mum, this is a bit of a trip down memory lane.
A bit of a self-indulgence, getting a chance to chat about Mum, what made her tick, some snippets from our recorded conversations together ... and a String Quartet!
We dip in and out of health care - in the shoes of someone who really didn't want to go there (care plans, advance care planning and all that STUFF) and just want to be left alone to get on with life, worry about whether to have Prosecco or champagne for her party and play Scrabble. #ProseccoGate.
I'll be back on the case with some living podcast guests very soon. I recorded a great one yesterday! :)
"Dying at 95 was not in Mum’s game plan. Her mum, my wonderfully independent, quirky grandma, lived to 104, living in her own home until she was 100.
I think Mum thought 'that is the way we do things around here'. "
#cancer #breastcancer #independence #FiercelyIndependent #OfftheScaleOfIndependent !
Mum’s lemon lightbulbs 🍋💡🍋
Some links you might enjoy:
Whose Shoes comes to a home care provider in Oxford
#FreeGillsMum
#CovMindTheGap
Me N' My Mum :)
We LOVE it when you leave a review!
If you enjoy my podcast and find these conversations useful
please share your thoughts by leaving a review (Apple is easiest to leave a review) and comment on your favourite episodes.
I tweet as @WhoseShoes and @WildCardWS and am on Instagram as @WildCardWS.
Please recommend 'Wild Card - Whose Shoes' to others who enjoy hearing passionate people talk about their experiences of improving health care.
Today would have been my Mum’s 100th birthday. Wow!
For those of you who used to enjoy tweeting with her @GIlls_Mum, this is a bit of a trip down memory lane.
A bit of a self-indulgence, getting a chance to chat about Mum, what made her tick, some snippets from our recorded conversations together ... and a String Quartet!
We dip in and out of health care - in the shoes of someone who really didn't want to go there (care plans, advance care planning and all that STUFF) and just want to be left alone to get on with life, worry about whether to have Prosecco or champagne for her party and play Scrabble. #ProseccoGate.
I'll be back on the case with some living podcast guests very soon. I recorded a great one yesterday! :)
"Dying at 95 was not in Mum’s game plan. Her mum, my wonderfully independent, quirky grandma, lived to 104, living in her own home until she was 100.
I think Mum thought 'that is the way we do things around here'. "
#cancer #breastcancer #independence #FiercelyIndependent #OfftheScaleOfIndependent !
Mum’s lemon lightbulbs 🍋💡🍋
Some links you might enjoy:
Whose Shoes comes to a home care provider in Oxford
#FreeGillsMum
#CovMindTheGap
Me N' My Mum :)
We LOVE it when you leave a review!
If you enjoy my podcast and find these conversations useful
please share your thoughts by leaving a review (Apple is easiest to leave a review) and comment on your favourite episodes.
I tweet as @WhoseShoes and @WildCardWS and am on Instagram as @WildCardWS.
Please recommend 'Wild Card - Whose Shoes' to others who enjoy hearing passionate people talk about their experiences of improving health care.
Today would have been my Mum’s 100th birthday. Wow!
Sadly she didn’t make it to 100. She died in July 2017 but we did have a fantastic party for her 95th birthday. I’m so glad we did. Memories. Seeing her celebrating with her family and friends. Being so loved, so understated as always. It was never about her – always making sure that everyone else was having a good time … but she did have a little glint in her eye as she blew out the candles on her cake and listened to the String Quartet that we had hired for her. Two particularly relevant clips are My Old Man and Mamma Mia.
(String Quartet plays)
Dying at 95 was not in Mum’s game plan. Her mum, my wonderfully independent, quirky grandma, lived to 104, living in her own home until she was 100. I think mum thought “that is the way we do things around here”.
Mum had been diagnosed with breast cancer, at quite an advanced stage, five years before and that was what finished her off in the end, but I’m delighted that successful treatment helped her have five years of living and never very obviously thinking about dying. Certainly, she didn’t talk about it. She was very much part of that stoical war generation, just getting on with life and everything it threw at you.
In fact Mum’s attitude made a mockery of any work that I might do around good end-of-life care. The nearest she would get to any kind of advance care planning would be oh, just leave me alone or shoot me when the time comes. Not exactly helpful in terms of filling in any form! I didn’t really go there. Just knew and understood her as a human being, and when the time came was absolutely beyond thrilled to be able to get her into Myton hospice where she had the best possible death. They say that having a good death leads to a good bereavement for the family, and although I miss her every day, it certainly helped me.
And of course the fact that Mum died back in 2017, meant that she missed the isolation of the pandemic. She would have absolutely hated that. I really feel for all the families who have been separated from their loved ones, waving through windows or hugging through plastic suits. And obviously particularly not being able to be with people at the end of life. The couple of weeks that I spent with mum at Myton hospice, just holding her hand, playing some of her favourite music, reading to her or just being there, being together are amongst the most special times of my life.
And now, Mum is not having to witness the horrors happening in the world at the moment. Ukraine. Those poor people. Including it seems many of the young Russian soldiers who haven’t got a clue what they are going into. The precarious position of the world at the moment. Mum and her generation believed so strongly that they had done enough, that their sacrifices and the horrors they have lived through in World War II would get the world into a ‘never again’ place. Her fiance Robin was in the RAF and shot down in action a month before their wedding. She let it later met my dad, also an RAF man Who served for six years abroad including in Burma as it was called then. They were married for 60 years and gave my brother and me wonderful role models as honest, hard-working people with great values.
So, a bit of a gloomy start possibly but it just gives some context in terms of today, how I am feeling, A myriad of thoughts that we all have swirling round on our heads as we feel so helpless. Joining all the other people making donations of clothes and food and money and whatever other small things that are actually within our own control to help.
My dad never really spoke about the war at all until the last few months of his life. He preferred to block it out and let it rest in the past, but he did agree to talk to me about it and record the conversation not long before he died, talking about some of his experiences, and that is very special to me.
I think I learnt from that and asked mum if we could set up a camera from time to time and just record us chatting in our normal way. I was surprised and delighted when she was happy to do this. I’ll share a few snippets. Just like when she wrote her blogs, mum was amazed that anybody was interested, but hopefully some of the podcast listeners who enjoy a bit of storytelling will be!
One of my most prized possessions is the elephant that my grandma placed symbolically on a face-down photo of Hitler on her mantelpiece during the war. For the whole duration of your war. They lived in London and would either go to the air raid shelter in the garden or hide under the solid wooden table in the dining room or under the stairs during an air raid.
Extract Mum talking about this.
I’m fascinated by the personal memories that we have around objects. Somebody else would you see that as a wooden elephant, without knowing this powerful story.
So, more about Mum. The podcast is a little self-indulgent perhaps. A chance to reflect, a chance to remember. People on Twitter will know how much I loved my mum – she tweeted as at Jill‘s mum and we had a lot of fun together. I would call round and see her and she would sometimes say “shall we say see you who is around to play today?”. It was such a brilliant example of no hierarchy just people. Her favourite playmates included Alison Cameron(with whom she shared deep Scottish roots), Kath Evans (ever afterwards known as the lady in the pink shirt), Andrea Sutcliffe, who gave her a beautiful little owl notebook that she hardly use because she wanted to scribble all her notes in her shorthand reporter’s pad and then turn it over and work back through it in the other direction … just to annoy me, as you could never tell what was up to date or not.
Well I don’t think she turned it over deliberately to annoy me but it certainly did – why don’t you use the lovely book that Andrea gave you to write your blogs in? Oh I will do. I’ll copy them out but I’ll write them in here first. And of course never did copy them out. So I’m left with piles of short-term reporters notes filled with a mix of shopping list, things to tell me and wonderful poems and stories.
(AUDIO - Mum talking about 'the owl book' and shorthand)
Oh, and after she died, I found a lot of her diaries … but these were actually written in shorthand. Tantalisingly she would say "G", as in the first letter of my name and then ... a pile of scribble, which obviously I want to understand but can’t! Haha. You had the last laugh there mum!
And talking about Twitter and laughing, who remembers our #FreeGillsMum campaign? It went unintentionally viral. The NHS had done what it does so well, admit my mum to hospital when she was very ill at one point, and make her better! but then go into overdrive about care packages that didn’t exist as she had never had any outside support beyond me and the family, move her to a different ward and label her as an outlier and generally start all that bed blocker shenanigans.
Twitter came to the rescue. You can read the story – I will attach it in the notes. But suffice to say Alison Cameron enlisted the Gordon Highlanders to play bagpipes in the hospital car park, Jenny the Midwife sent a Trojan horse to rescue her, Kath Evans sent a brightly coloured mosaic elephant, and there were cartoons of old ladies and suffragettes chained to railway lines and railings, and many other contributions kept Mum entertained while we tried to work out what to do. And more seriously, it made things happen much quicker – you shouldn’t need Gordon Highlanders and Mongolian soldiers to get you out of hospital. And some of these experiences fuel my who issues work and particularly work around frailty and integrated care.
I’d love to think that I would live long enough see the day when the NHS, social care and indeed the community join up to provide proper integrated care, but I think I’d probably need to Live longer than my grandma, let alone my mum.
Mum was proud of my Whose Shoes work, although she didn’t always totally get it.
Who does? ;-)
I have proud pictures of her holding up our first book of #MatExp (maternity experience) case studies. Somehow, however old you get , having a proud parent is very special indeed. I miss it! But I was so lucky to have my mum in my life for so long.
Mum’s experiences of life and of Health care contributing quite a few WS scenarios. The most famous one is one of the most influential scenarios within the #MatExp card set. Changing times. Here is Mum reading it.
(Changing Times)
Florence Wilcock says it is her favourite scenario. It has sparked so many conversations about things that are taken for granted at one point in time, and then become unthinkable or ridiculous a generation later.
Castor oil! Imagine being made to take castor oil because you are having a baby!!
I think this card played a part in inspiring Flo’s famous lithotomy challenge – certainly lithotomy position is one of the most popular topics of discussion when this card comes up at our workshops.
Mum came along to a few events with me, which was very special indeed.
The ones that stand out include a one off event that we did with a domiciliary care provider in Oxford. A small private company realised that the owners had never actually met their clients and were determined to do something about that and to hear direct from them what they thought of the service and how things could be improved. We put together the most wonderful day – the Whose Shoes board game was part of it, but also Cake and talks and involving local people giving tips about growing herbs and bits and pieces even if you only have a tiny windowsill space. Very human. I remember one woman hadn’t been out of the house for about three years and they nurtured her to come along – not just an invitation, but real encouragement, valuing her opinion, providing support, a taxi and an escort to get there. It is that kind of love and care behind the scenes that makes for true inclusion and engagement.
Anyway, coming back to mum, mum had many talents. She was a very good artist, although it was hard to get her to admit that she was really good at anything much. Really great with pencil drawings and sketches, also a very good writer. She could have made more of her skills if she hadn’t always waited to be in the mood, and putting other people's needs first.
So at that Oxford workshop, we arrived early and I made your mum was sitting right next to Carrie Lewis, our graphic artist, who was recording the conversations on the day. I said mum if you get fed up with the discussions, just watch Carrie and you will love it. I think she enjoyed both!
She also came along to our local #CovMindTheGap session. Again, I’ll share the story of this – this time in the form of a video - see if you can if you can pick her out. She absolutely loved it and my friends from Grapevine and the local community looked after her. We went on to do our magic mile walk around Coventry after the workshop, with storytelling in the old cathedral, dancing and singing outside the council house and all sorts. Mum wasn’t up for any of that and my friend Dorothy took her back for a nice lunch. None of us can do it alone, and I was so grateful to my friends who helped to make this such a great event, including giving me peace of mind knowing mum was OK … and no excuse for her not to come!
In terms of this podcast being notionally about healthcare, seeing how Mum viewed things gave some really great insights into what matters to people. Thanking back, she generally enjoyed very good help but did have some significant challenges over the years – hepatitis, skin cancer, and a couple of operations amongst them. She generally with you with them as a nuisance and wanted minimal intervention, and hated it when she ended up with very poor mobility for the last two or three years of her life.
She didn’t like the idea of carers coming in and out. If she had to have support, she didn’t see why they didn’t just come and talk to her, do what was needed, and go.
Why did they have to spend all that time scribbling in a book?
(Mum talking about the carers who like scribbling ...!)
She would have her own pet names for things, and I’d have to work out what was happening.
Her 4-wheel walker was called 'the Batmobile'. She would tell me “the bloodsuckers are coming today”.
Apparently because she couldn’t remember the name domiciliary phlebotomist – no I’m not surprised!
I remember Mum‘s friends thinking I was good with technology. I used to enjoy going in and showing them bits and pieces I was up to - Steller stories and so on. I wonder what they would’ve made of mum getting a mention for her 100th birthday on lemonade radio. I reckon that would’ve been worth a few brownie points. Thank you so much Cristina Serrao!
(Tribute to Mum and Gay Gordons clip on Lemonade Radio www.lemonade.radio)
Anyway, I promised to talk about health care ...
The local services would boast a ‘one-stop shop’, for all things related to support in the community – which of course meant that if you couldn’t get through to that number, you couldn’t get through to anything. I remember tweeting in frustration when the clock went past half an hour waiting to get through and then flip to the voicemail – it is now Friday evening the weekend and we will be open as normal 9 o’clock Monday morning. Not helpful.
By this stage, Mum was deteriorating so fast that equipment was being delivered and by the time it was delivered, it was no longer any use to her, as her needs were increasing quickly.
But most frustratingly,, they would deliver the next item of equipment and be unable to collect any of the other items now clogging up the tiny flat, because it wasn’t on the docket to collect things, just deliver.
Even though it was going back to exactly the same store and somebody else might want it!
Anyway, I won’t go into all of that today…
So some special people who helped in terms of healthcare at the end:
A wonderful oncologist, who took Mum’s hand and sat with her on the bed, when he had some pretty bleak news to share in terms of test results
The GP. who understood that when people are tearing their hair out, they don’t need unnecessary stuff to deal with.
I remember when I complained about the anxiety Mum got into by having to remember to phone for her monthly prescriptions, and only being able to do so within a tiny timeframe, and asking why it couldn’t be computerised properly – He understood that it was important for her to be able to do this herself, rather than rely on me. She was an incredibly independent person.
He said "Gill, I will give your mum a truck load of tablets!" Basically, by this, we worked together so that she always had at least a month’s supply and didn’t have to worry any more. The little things are the big things.
The paramedics have basically helped me keep Mum out of hospital so that she could go to Myton Hospice alright up there as my favourite healthcare people!
Other special people were two wonderful friend-carers Who is slowly morphed from people calling to spend a bit of time with Mum, chat and do the crossword or whatever she fancy doing, too providing personal care as her mobility declined.
Far more Mum’s style than a string of carers that she didn’t know. Continuity, but also having the right person.
Pretty basic stuff really.
One of them tipped me off that Mum is cancer had come back with a vengeance – she hadn’t told me or perhaps hadn’t even told herself, if you know what I mean.
So, I didn’t have a grand plan for the podcast. I thought I’d just talk and see where it went.
I didn’t set out to tell you all about Mum. What a fantastic Mum, Granny and Great-Granny she was, what she did with her life, the wonderful assisted living arrangement she had for the last three years of her life, her views or her interests - so many other aspects of a long and very fulfilled life.
Just a little reflection on this, my mums hundredth birthday. Happy birthday Mum.
Keep sending those rainbows. We all love you loads. From Gilly, as she called me.
Never Gill. And only Gillian, when I knew I was in BIG trouble!