Life's short

I wrote my mum's life story the other day . . . on half a sheet of A4 paper.

It was a weird experience, having to sum up 76 years in a few carefully chosen sentences.

It isn't something I'd planned to do. I arrived at the care home after lunch on Sunday afternoon for one of my regular visits.

My mum has been there since being diagnosed with dementia last year. I try to see her at least once a week but I'm pretty sure she's unaware of the frequency of my visits.

I dare say I could leave it a month and she'd be none the wiser, not that I ever would. Very occasionally a light will go on behind those tired eyes and she will ask a question that's relevant to her current situation or make a statement I can understand. Most of the time, though, she's in some other place.

We were in the midst of one of our usual strained conversations - the ones that have no beginning and no end - when a member of staff approached me with a clipboard and a sheet of A4 paper torn in half.

She had an unusual request . . . could I write a potted biography of my mum's life - "just the major events" - to help staff relate to her?

Well, could I? Could I really sum up 70-plus years in a few hundred words? Incredibly, I could . . . and all too easily.

It was a depressing exercise. My mum's life, it seemed to me, had been remarkably uneventful.
It had followed a well trodden path - she married young, had three children, stayed at home with them until they were old enough for her to hold down a series of low-paid jobs before settling into semi-retirement, having purchased the council house we'd lived in for over a decade.

There were a few twists - the fact that she'd been adopted as a child; how she'd cared for her mother at home when she was dying of cancer and how her eldest daughter, my sister, had emigrated to Israel.

But overall, my mum's life seemed to have been defined by the things she hadn't done, rather than the things she had.

I handed the completed sheet back to the carer, feeling mildly pleased with myself for having summed up a life of seemingly missed opportunities so succinctly.

And then it struck me. Is my life really any different? How many sheets of A4 would it be worth?
It was then that I vowed to draw up a 'Bucket List' . . . a list of things you want to do before you kick the bucket

But, then, maybe it's not what we do with our lives that's important but how we live them. I don't have the answer.

All I know is that if, God forbid, my kids ever find themselves trying to summarise my life, I'd like to think that half an A4 sheet of paper won't be nearly enough.

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