Now as to every coin there are two sides, as this is the case with my character, the fundamental things that make me tick and ultimately what makes me want to write and make me value things I believe in. I feel I should introduce newer followers to my mum aka (DB). How can I put it , she is singularly THE most important person in my life, thankfully my girlfriend gets this and understands this and does not feel threatened by it.
My mum has single-handedly taught me more about life and how to conduct myself through it than any other person alive or dead. But that’s to be attributed to the way she has conducted herself through her life .I feel it only right that I start at the beginning to explain what I mean when I say that. Now as a child at about 6 years old she became very ill and she developed T.B meningitis, she lost her mother at the age of 9 and also her eldest sister who was just 22 when she died , both her mother and sister also had T.B. My mum had an experimental operation which saved her life , but it was at the cost of her hearing (they destroyed her eardrums ) . Now my mum was lucky enough to have a father who had a no-nonsense kind of attitude to life , who had not only just lost his wife, his eldest child and was also witness to his youngest daughter (my mum) fighting for her life. He also kept his remaining three children together, held down a full-time job,and didn’t have the privilege of care leave or child care as is the case today, in the late forties early 1950’s these things did not simply exist. Anyway after my mum spent two yeas in hospital , as a no-nonsense kind of man he work his fingers to the bone to pay for my mum to go to a specialist boarding school as he had the hindsight to know she needed a head start because there were no special provisions for disabled people back then , there were no day schools for deaf children then . As result my grandfather’s intervention she ended up working in a hearing environment as a secretary.Remarkable for its time , never once has my mum ever let her disability stand in way, but unfortunately society and it’s environment have! She overcomes obstacles the world tries to challenge her with instead of grumbling why they’ve put them there in the first place. She is a true survivor in every sense of the word and as a result values her life more preciously than any other person I know and as out of respect I try to live my life in the same way. (Sometimes it is more difficult , than you think, but somehow her strength always gets me through!- It definately did this year , this year we helped each other out. )
My mum went back into work working in a film archives as a cutter/editor when I was 8, I became a latch key kid !
When my mother was 45 the after effects of the experimental operation she had as child came back to haunt her and she began find it difficult to walk. she had a spinal operation which found adhesion’s from the medication used were slowly killing her nervous system and again down to the wonders of medicine my mum survived but at a further loss of her ability to walk, and is subsequently as this was happening, she also battled breast cancer twice and ovarian cancer and skin cancer yet she is still with us.With not word of complaint. Nor has there ever been any moments she has felt sorry for herself.
They say that you only get one mother and mine is special. I became her carer 25 years ago when she was no longer able to walk, stand ,shower/ dress herself . As a family we agreed we did not want to rely on strangers and so far we haven’t (apart from when she has been in hospital). I work part time to look after DB , this means that week days mornings are regimented up at 4 , so I can get her ready , then its off to sort myself out . It breaks my heart to have to get her up so early , but she always says at Ieast I am lucky I get to see the sun rise.
I have one aim in life and that is to ensure that DB has the best quality of life, that she’s happy , for however long that maybe.
It’s important you also know I do not write these blogs to gain sympathy or anything egotistical, I purely write , one for myself because I enjoy writing as it calms my mind (because I have inherited the depressive gene off my dad!) and two I need to have a rant every so often because let’s be frank most people in this world are feckin annoying and stupid and are so feckin preoccupied with whats wrong with their life that they forget was right with it. Although I find it’s best deal with such people head on sometimes it’s not always the time nor the place and sometimes nothing can beat a good old rant!!
So that’s it , my mum summarized in a blog, and will explain what I write and the reason I write about certain things in future blogs. Nothing to more to declare, except the most important word to me is FAMILY and although mine haven’t always had an easy ride of it , we have stuck it out , and dealt with things head on and just got on with our lives as most of us do, but I suppose it’s all down to the genes and I’m lucky with mine
