Mother III

Yesterday evening I was housebound. For the better part of the day wet snow had been falling here, driven by gale force winds. A few miles along the road to Perth the landscape is once again blanketed with snow. I long to be home in Messinia. My daughter, Annabelle, had been here for the weekend together with her partner, Ben, and their two toddler daughters who we took this morning to visit their great-grandmother at Ashley House. Although she had no idea of who the children were, their being there brought a rare smile to mother's face. The visit had brought her some pleasure so was worthwhile. I can not know what the children, Lara three and Poppy twenty months, made of the frail old lady they know as 'Nan' and wonder what, if any, picturess of her and of Ashley House may have been implanted into the childrens' minds; I wonder if, for those who suffer dementia towards the end of long lives, such misty images latent from very early childhood, restore to become part of a kaleidoscope of shadowy thoughts , floating in time and space, that seem to be all that the condition permits to be in their daily experience of life.