Good morning!

The Christmas mum can’t remember…

and we’ll never forget!

Isn’t it funny how the relationship with your parents changes? I think they call it the three ages of life. Or is it the three stages of life?

You see, when you are young you rely totally on your parents. They look after you. They guide and provide. You are totally dependent on them.

Then you grow up and you don’t need to rely on your parent’s support any more. Well, at least, not in a material way. You share an equal relationship where, quite simply, you enjoy each other’s company.

And then, once more, the scenario changes and your parents become increasingly more reliant on you. The things that years ago you used to look to them for help with now become the things for which they look to you for help. They are dependent on you.

The amazing thing is how gradually, yet inevitably, the transition from one stage to another takes place. There’s never a definite point in either your life or your parent’s where you or they could say, “Now we are onto the next chapter.” It kind of creeps up on you, but creep up it does.

That’s why the Christmas just gone was such a watershed in our family’s life. And so horribly memorable. You see that’s when we realised that the relationship between Mum and us had gone to the next stage. And worst of all, we hadn’t seen it coming!

To cut a long story short, Mum started doing and saying strange, out of character things. Things that we probably wouldn’t have noticed when we just called in to see her, but which we saw almost immediately when she lived with us over Christmas.

Now I won’t bore you with the details other than to say that coping with it was the worst possible experience we’ve had with Mum… at least so far. Half the time she was in cuckoo cloud land doing strange things and having conversations and re-living experiences with acquaintances long gone. The other half of the time she was fine. Absolutely one hundred percent normal, or at least we think she was.

Trouble is you never knew when she was which!

That’s when it hit us. All this time we’d assumed Mum was okay and had been letting her run her own affairs just like she’d always done (and Dad had done until he died). Trouble is, she wasn’t capable and hadn’t been capable for ages.

The story doesn’t end there of course. Because knowing is one thing. Doing is another. We knew that Mum wasn’t capable of managing her affairs but arranging to take it off her was something else.

Happily, we got the problem sorted out after a lot of time, trouble and expense. Not to mention the mix of emotions that went with it… sorrow, guilt heartburn and the rest.

But here’s what upsets me most.

We weren’t prepared for it. Nobody but nobody told me, or the rest of the family, that what happened could happen. And nobody told us that there was a simple step that we could have taken, when Mum and Dad were getting on, that would have solved a helluva lot of the problems.

And what is that simple step? It’s called getting an enduring power of attorney.

If you don’t know what it is or what it can do (or if the people in your family for whom you just may become responsible haven’t done it) then take my tip. Do something about it now.

And that way you may just avoid the Christmas (or any other time) from hell.

Yours sincerely

Winston Marsh.