The Long Goodbye latest update

 My mother has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's for over a year .She still has some long term memory but her short term memory is gone completely.
She remembers little of her life from the last 40 years for instance,

I show her photos of the family and her childhood home in Ireland, which she enjoys, but I have to remind her who they are.
Sad to see my intelligent , feisty mother like this. She was always so full of life, gardening, bowling but now she has little joy.
She doesn't like
mixing with other people so won't attend a day centre like my father.
She loves making words from scrabble cards and doing word searches.
I was told that  the part of the brain we use for this is a different section and hers is intact.
Her personality seems stripped back to its essence and all of her negative views and anxieties have gone -she's like a different person and I 'm seeing who she would have been without her difficult marriage and hard life.

I had a dream in which my Irish Grandmother came to tell me she was looking after Mum. I didn't tell my mother , but the next time I saw her she told me she couldn't sleep "Because My Mam keeps visiting me - she came one day with other people with other people and I wanted to go with them, but I was told to stay."

I am learning how much I love her at this time .I visit again in a few day and will bring about the town we lived in most of our lives.

Small Stones

Small Stones

Summer fills me with optimism
.I have been de-cluttering and organising myself.
Currently doing a course in writing and spirituality with a   Buddhist.
The idea of writing "small Stones" every day has been wonderful -I probably would have baulked at having to write every day. Doing the small stones helps me connect with my poetry and thus with Bride the Goddess I work with.

The idea I think links to "The Artist's Way" by Julia Cameron.
If you feel overwhelmed by writing anything it's a good place to start.

Here are a few of my "Small Stones"


Morning coffee aroma arouses my senses.
Sunlight streams in
through the café window


Flow and grace of yoga
sunlight through the window panes
forms blocks of light across the floor
and we are in a cathedral.


25 years ago today
I gave birth to a daughter Lucy meaning light
Most powerful moment of love I ever felt
when I looked into her eyes for the first time.



Today I have a list of things to do so must go and do them whilst I have the energy.
Number one is vocal
exercising for I have choir rehearsal tonight and we're doing a lot of Handel. Blessed be