With Janie’s encouragement, I did some comprehensive updating to my wardrobe (i.e. the contents thereof) at Solo Uomo after the lunchtime concert we attended at the Wigmore Hall on the Monday:
Trio Mediaeval, Wigmore Hall Lunchtime Concert, 17 September 2018
By the weekend, all the alterations were ready, so we ventured, on the Sunday, to Cavendish Square to collect the clobber, take it to the flat and clear out some of my old gear.
The items identified for the chop included, among many other things, a pink stripped shirt which was showing signs of wear and a pair of green corduroy trousers of seriously discernible vintage and wear. The charity shop seemed grateful for all.
Point is, I realised that those items, when combined with my purple Massimo Dutti jumper (not for the chop – there must be decades of use left in that garment)…
…were the very togs I wore on one of my last visits to see mum before she died – a visit that yielded one of my favourite anecdotes about that difficult time.
It was late December 2014. Mum had pretty much been unconscious throughout my previous couple of visits, including Christmas Day, when I visited together with Janie.
I was working at home between Christmas and New Year. One morning, I think the 28th or 29th December, when I called the hospital for my daily update, the nurse, rather surprisingly, said that mum seemed much better that morning and was sitting up and talking.
I asked if I could come and visit, despite the fact that it was not visiting hours, as she had been unconscious on my previous visits and I would like to catch a conscious phase if I could. The nurse asked how far away I was and, when i told her, said that I should set off straight away, to get there and have some time with mum ahead of the lunchtime rounds.
So I hurriedly threw on the purple jumper over my “schlock around working at home” pink shirt and green chords, then sped off in Dumbo towards St Georges.
When I got to the ward, mum was indeed sitting up and conscious. “Hello darling,” she said – immediate recognition although she had adopted terms like “darling” and “honey” about a year earlier, once the dementia had eaten away at her memory for names.
Then she looked me up and down, frowning.
“Oh dear, that jumper does not go with that shirt and those trousers. And couldn’t you even have brushed your hair before coming to see me? Oh dear.”
Yes, even on her death bed, with dementia ravaging her mind, my mum could still form a judgment on my appearance and dole out a tongue-lashing if she so desired.
It might sound strange, but it is one of my most abiding memories of mum; that exchange was quintessentially her.