Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Midlife and the adult child
- 2 Becoming a carer
- 3 The transition to care
- 4 Materiality, clothing, and embodiment in care
- 5 Social connections and relationship building in residential care
- 6 The loss of parents in later life
- Final reflections
- Appendix 1 Researching the child-parent caregiving relationship
- Appendix 2 Participant charts
- References
- Index of participants
- Index of subjects
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Midlife and the adult child
- 2 Becoming a carer
- 3 The transition to care
- 4 Materiality, clothing, and embodiment in care
- 5 Social connections and relationship building in residential care
- 6 The loss of parents in later life
- Final reflections
- Appendix 1 Researching the child-parent caregiving relationship
- Appendix 2 Participant charts
- References
- Index of participants
- Index of subjects
Summary
Hazel
When I arrived to interview Hazel at her North London home, I found that she had prepared my favourite lunch. We had never met before, but she had secretively asked our mutual contact what I might like. She showed me around her home and even offered me a pair of guest slippers to wear, an invitation perhaps, to ‘take a walk in her shoes’. This visit became more than an interview; instead it was a day of sharing intimate stories of profoundly difficult experiences surrounding the changing relationship she had had with her mother in the final years of her life.
Towards the end of the day, Hazel showed me her family documents. As she flicked through the digital photographs on her desk-top computer she skipped past one rather quickly. I asked if she would mind going back, as that photograph had caught my attention. “Oh,” she said, “that's not a good picture. I am crying in that one.” “Would you mind telling me about the story behind that photo?” I asked. She told me that this was a photo taken at her mother's 100th birthday party and that the day had been particularly difficult.
‘[The 100th birthday] was a turning point in all ways. One, you know, she was a hundred, how extraordinary! And two, that was when she went into care. She went in just a few days later. And actually, I don’t regret it. I didn't regret it at the time. I don't regret it now, at all. It's a step, isn't it? And I can’t, I can't work out why it's so difficult’, Hazel said with tears pricking in her eyes. ‘It's a loss – excuse me. It's a loss, but erm, it's also an incredible gain. It was a gain for me, because I was feeling that a lot of my life was getting lost in terms of where my energy was going. I was losing, I was losing, I was losing touch with people. I mean, everybody would ask after her, and lots of people came with me to see her. My friend Jonah came fairly regularly; Paul came from Thailand, you know. Erm, people would come with me to see her, and Josie came every week, for God's sake, you know! But I felt my energy was being sapped by all of this. Does that make sense?’
‘Absolutely, yes.’
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- The Child-Parent Caregiving Relationship in Later LifePsychosocial Experiences, pp. 1 - 11Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2023