Mum sits in the old family armchair. It's been part of the household for as long as I can remember and has become threadbare as Dickens would have called it. I search my memories, trying to piece together memoirs of my childhood, sitting on the rug listening to my dad recall stories from his own youth. The armchair was a once beautiful green, now it is tinged and faded with age, memories weaving into the very fabric disguised as stains. A map of our lives as a family. The good and the bad. Mum was sat in the armchair the day she broke the news to me of Dad's death. Now she sits there babbling incoherently, the occasional mumble of a time long before my own, as I try and tell her of the grandchild she shall soon hold in her arms. Names spout from her lips, names not spoken in this house for a number of years. Suzanna, Elizabeth, Mary, William. Her siblings. Aunts and uncles I was never able to meet, most having passed as children.
She looks at me, smiling. Recognition beaming at me, but not that of a mother and her child. The lucid moments mum gets has become fewer and far between lately. She thinks I'm Elizabeth. Perhaps it's my brunette hair, or my overly large brown eyes, that make her think this. Or perhaps there is no logical reasoning and it is simply the Dementia playing a cruel trick. No matter the cause, I play along. Just as her doctors advised I do.
"When she's confused, play along. Talk to her and encourage her. It'll help keep her calm," they had told me after one of mum's violent outbursts. And so that is what I do. In these moments I am not Amelia, I am Elizabeth. All grown up and living away from the home my mum knew growing up.
"I'm pregnant," I tell her, kneeling beside her. The rug feels rough against my kneecap, another reminder of the years that have sped by. The years I flew the nest and tried, and failed, to build a family of my own. She stops mumbling then and looks at me intensely. Her face softens, bringing with it an air of youth. As though someone has taken an iron and steamed out the wrinkles that map her skin. She smiles, a smile that reaches her eyes. Something I've not seen in many months. In a split second the smile is smeared from her face and replaced with a disapproving frown.
"Oh Lizzie, how could you!? You're not married. You can't have a baby out of wedlock! You'll shame the family," she turns her back to me, arms crossed over her chest.
I sigh, unable to quench the stab of hurt. Mum's family remained old fashioned in their beliefs. Even though the 40s when mum had been born had long since passed, Nan had continued to look down on women who had children without having been married. What was the normality for those in my generation was still an abomination to her. Mum had never said she viewed circumstances that way, but with her Dementia trapping her in a time warp it seems to be her mindset now.
"I am married, to a lovely man," Mum huffs but turns to face me. This time it is she who looks hurt. I feel guilty before she opens her mouth to speak. I know exactly what she is thinking. Why would her sister not invite her to the wedding?
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I'm Sorry, I love you
قصص عامة||In the process of editing offline|| TW: depictions of sexual assault and abuse throughout Amelia is a successful business owner, with big dreams for the future. Dreams her husband Michael does not share. As their marriage progresses, so does Mich...
