The conundrum of memory

Random thoughts on a visit to my mother's bedside ...

The early morning sun cuts a swathe through the motorway as we talk. Three and and half hours and nearly ninety years lay between us.

My elder brother calls as we travel. She's had a fall yesterday, she'll be in bed when we arrive. We pull up outside her front door and retrieve a key from the entry safe in the porch.

The house is warm yet strangely empty, almost every memory emptied out. Just a few family photographs on a shelf in the living room. And one poignant black and white picture in a cheap porcelain frame by her bedside. A pretty young blond girl who never grew up, a long dead sister smiling down the years. Haunting.

To our joy, she recognises us, her rheumy eyes opening as we come to the bedside. Her body is so frail now. I watch her hands tremble, bent into strange but beautiful forms by the years. We talk.

"She never wanted me you know, she told me that when I was two."

My mother can't remember the names of her parents. But she remembers with terrifying clarity her own mother.

"She said if she'd seen the stork flying over she would have shot it."

Who could say such a thing to a two year old child? The conundrum of memory to an old and frail lady, now as helpless in her years as that once young life. A peace fills the room as she floats once more into sleep. Her mouth opens wide to suck in the last of the winter air.

We lock up the house, replacing the key in the safe. And the memory persists.