My Mother's diaries 1998-2000

I have just spend a happy hour reading Mum's diaries for 1998, 1999 and 2000.

The deterioration in her memory and in her general health as evidenced in these three collections is really quite marked. In 1998 and early 1999 what she wrote about and the way she wrote about it was almost indistinguishable from her regular output from the 1960s onwards. In May 1999 she started missing a few entries and by 2000 her writing is far more "spidery", many days have no entry and her assorted health problems were her main topic of concern.

But what is far more interesting is that to all intents and purposes her grandchildren have vanished from her thoughts after May 1999. If you were a stranger reading what Mum had written you would find few clues that she had two married children and four grandchildren! As an example my daughter Sally doesn't get a single mention in the last eight months of 1999 and Hazel is mentioned exactly once.

Yet every week without fail I spoke to Mum on the phone at 11:00AM on Sunday. Nothing whatsoever that was said about what the 4 of us had been doing in these, fairly lengthy, calls is reported in her diaries.