I knew something was
wrong with mum when she stopped putting her make up on.
This was the woman who
would get up at 6am to put her Carmen Rollers in, and never left the house
without lipstick.
But a couple of years after
she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s she just ‘forgot’ to put her make up on one
day, and then stopped altogether.
I actually found it
shocking to see her barefaced. My glamorous mum, who had used her physical
blessings to charm and flirt her way through life, looked vulnerable without
her war paint.
Feminism to her meant being
able to dance alone rather than waiting for a boy to ask you, turning down the queues
of suitors who waited outside her hotel in Italy simply because she was blond,
paying your own way round the world and rising from post -war poverty through shear
hard work to return to school in her 30’s and finally get her A-levels and go
to university. And earning enough of her own money to buy herself the fancy
clothes she had always wanted as a child.
In the swinging 60’s
she worked as a tour guide on the Costa Brava (a very glamorous profession in
the early days of international tourism) and would get her hair blow dried
everyday before hitting the beach and covering herself in olive oil to tan
quicker. In the 70’s she had poker
straight waist length blond hair, drove a yellow open top sports car and had a boyfriend
10 years younger than her (my dad).
A cougar before if was fashionable! In the 80's she wore boxy power suits
with nautical trims to her high powered executive job, while still managing to
beguile her clients with her looks and charm.
These are my memoires
of my mum. Gorgeous, glamorous and strong.
Now after I help her
shower, I look for her make up bag and offer to ‘do her face’. As I fill
in her eyebrows and gently apply the blusher
it feels like a poignant ritual. And after the lipstick is on she looks more
like herself – or my image of her. She’s still an attractive woman. And she looks far to young to act this
old.
So if, as the evidence
suggests, Alzheimer’s may be hereditary (my granny had it too), and I get this
awful disease, I only ask one thing – please, for the love of god, will someone
put some slap on me?
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