Time to care
It was a joy to look after Mum
There is one certainty after Theresa May’s handbrake-turn on her social care policy yesterday: wherever lifetime contributions end up being capped, more elderly people will have to pay to be cared for at home. And the squeezed ‘‘sandwich generation’’ will need to step up (or step off the career ladder) to keep down costs. But as Mrs May has said herself, there are boys’ jobs and girls’ jobs – and, according to the Office for National Statistics, daughters are twice as likely as sons to become carers for their Aged Ps.
As the mother of three sons myself, I am anxiously reminded of the adage, “A son is a son until he takes a wife, but a daughter is a daughter all her life”. So it is some comfort to discover there are men more than happy to juggle.
Twin brothers Christopher and Simon Clement-davies, 56, and their younger brother, David, 53, devoted themselves to the care of their beloved 90-year-old mother, Joanna, in her final years. Once a society beauty and concert pianist, when she became ill and confined to her bed in 2015, Christopher (who has two sons, Louis, 11, and Alexander, 13) and Simon (father to seven-year-old Allegra) juggled her care with that of their children, and their careers – enabling her to remain in the north-west London home she loved until she passed away in March.
Simon, a director of an investment bank, says: “We three sons rotated the supervision of my mother’s care, each living with her at our old family home for three months. I moved my family in and found providing that exuberant atmosphere again was a life-saver. It made an enormous difference to Mama’s life. She became visibly stronger.”
Christopher, a lawyer and investment banker, agrees: “We gave my mother what most carers can’t – a stimulating, family environment to keep the colour in her life. Mother’s life was full of great achievements, passions and brilliant friends. She married into an important political family [their grandfather, Clement Davies, was Liberal Party leader for 11 years] and had a rock-solid relationship with our father, Stanley, a lawyer.
“Growing up, family life was full of conversation, argument and highspirits, so it was essential we brought the same stimulus to Mother’s bedside. If she had been left to her own devices, with carers not knowing how to talk to her, making silly mistakes, her life would have been utterly miserable. Having her family close, talking to her about concerts we’d been to and books we’d read, brightened up her life.”
Inevitably, there were times when Christopher, who is divorced, felt torn between the needs of his children and his mother. “Elderly parents can be demanding and critical, but then think how exhausting must have been the demands of three strong-willed boys.”
A sense of humour is essential, he chuckles, recalling how Joanna refused to use the ipad he bought her and took an instant dislike to Siri, its voice-recognition system. “Just as she did with us as children, I had to put my foot down and insist she give new things a go. Simon and I frequently got phone calls at work about ‘disasters’ happening and one of us would go hurtling over to sort it out. When I was in a high-powered meeting, she called to say the TV remote had been left out of reach.”
Certainly, most people’s successes are a credit to sacrifices their parents made. Vikas Vedi, 50, an orthopaedic surgeon living in Buckinghamshire with his doctor wife, Ujuala, and their young sons, seven and nine, is clear how he benefited from his parents’ support through UCL medical school. So when it became apparent that Surinder, 84 and Yash, 80, could no longer cope on their own – his mother has kidney disease and his father’s eyesight is failing – there was no question that they he should shoulder their care, and move them into the family home.
“When we were of school age, my father, a successful businessman, sacrificed a major business opportunity to keep the family together. We lived in Kenya but he didn’t want his children to board in England, so he moved with us, even though that meant a more modest job and salary. He would have been a multi-millionaire if he hadn’t put us first. Now it’s the turn of the son to give something back to the father”.
Vik is fortunate in that he has been able to provide his parents with separate living quarters, plus a housekeeper to clean and do laundry. But before he begins his 12-hour working day – all the more frenzied, since demand has soared for the procedure to treat osteoarthritis of the knee he introduced to the UK – he is on rather more prosaic breakfast duty.
“It’s very regimented; Dad has two fish fingers or poached eggs, toast and a cocktail of different cereals. Mum has cereal with a protein supplement. I can do it in 10 minutes flat before I leave for work and the school run. I see my first patient at 8.30am and my last one at 8pm, so now I’ve created two half days a week to run errands for my parents, and fit family events around Mum’s dialysis appointments.”
In the evenings, there are few minutes to spare between getting home and his children’s and his parents’ bedtimes. “It is hard to find the balance. My boys will be shouting ‘Daddy, Daddy’, and maybe one of my parents hasn’t been well. Some people might look at it as a burden but I am committed to making their twilight years as happy as possible. I dread the day when they’re not around.”
In the final months of his mother’s life, Christopher spent more time with her – an experience both found rewarding – while Simon, along with Allegra and his wife, Clara, an actress and theatre producer, kept a weekly Sunday evening vigil at her home.
“I bought the best cuts of meat from the local organic butcher and a good bottle of red Bordeaux to lift her spirits. The three of us would sit around Mama’s bed, giving her the sense she was part of a wonderful dinner party.”
Christopher adds: “My mother had a Bechstein grand piano and Simon or I would play it so she could hear the sound she loved from her room. She herself had thrilled audiences with her public and spontaneous performances. Music was such an important part of her life.”
Two weeks before she died, he arranged for his friend, celebrated cellist Steven Isserlis, to give a mini concert at his mother’s bedside with the family gathered round. “Steven played one of Bach’s greatest pieces, giving us an enduring memory of a flash of renewed inspiration across her face as she listened.”
Joanna’s memorial service will be held in London in early June. For all the difficulties, Christopher believes it was his and his brothers’ great fortune to enhance her final years.
“Our mother delighted everyone with her beauty, charm and joie de vivre. She was the perfect mother, a wonderful companion, a deeply artistic and gifted individual. Half our school friends fell in love with her! Why would we have considered it a chore to keep those qualities alive? We were the lifeline to the world my mother knew and provided for us. What we did for her in her later years was to repay the compliment.”
‘We were a lifeline to the world my mother knew’