I will always remember your stories Mum. They were wonderful stories of your early childhood and of the war times. You repeated them so so many times. I did my best to sit and listen. The most prominent one was the time during an air raid in World War 2. You were 14 years old. The siren went and you all went into the shelter. All but your father. He was a tall handsome man who had one wrong thing about him – he never went into war shelters and that day it was the worst mistake of his life. As mum was down in the shelter with her mother and two siblings, a massive bomb came down so close to them. It was absolutely awful and frightening. They all knew that it was very close and that many houses near them would be destroyed.

As soon as the all-clear was given, your mother asked you to run ahead to see what had happened. The sight that stood before you was a shocking nightmare! Your beautiful house had gone down and reduced to rubble..and your father? He was buried under it all.

When they finally found his body, crushed under the stones, he had shrunk in size. You never forgot that scene, did you mum?

I will always have one question in my head that can never be answered. What caused your dementia? Was it the shock of this horrible day? A day that changed the rest of your life?

So many question marks, so many theories…yet never any answers. Are the questions buried with mum? Never. Are the answers buried with mum? Yes, I believe they are.