LETTERS TO AMERICA

I'm just checking in and apologise that I haven't and won't be participating very much with journals and comments for a while, as there's a huge amount of clearing and sorting of my parents' belongings to do. I'll try to fill in some of the gaps with back blips from time to time as well.

Between January 1978 and October 1980 Dad worked at the British Embassy in Washington DC, and we found that he had kept all the letters we wrote to him from England - and there were a lot! There hasn't been enough time to read them all, but glancing through them brought back so many memories that we had completely forgotten about, all on blue air mail paper or air letter forms. We used to write pages and pages of news and chat in those days. There are also comments in the letters about having to wait in for phone calls from them, because in those days you had to book a transatlantic phone call in advance.

Thank you so much for all the kind comments about losing my Mum last week. She had a fall during the night after I arrived and though they only found superficial injuries when we got her to A&E, they did a battery of tests during the day during which they found that she had asymptomatic Covid. We have no idea where she got it from as everyone has been so careful around her, but the doctor said it's everywhere and they double-checked to make sure. They decided to keep her in to check some other concerning blood results, and unfortunately the trauma of the fall - though she'd forgotten about it by the evening - and her frailty and failing heart meant that she couldn't resist the pneumonia that suddenly overwhelmed her during the night. All the time that sister R and I spent with her in A&E (not catching Covid, so far), she thought she was at home though couldn't understand where her things were, so we feel that her wish to end her days in her own home was granted at least in her own mind. And, we hadn't yet got round to "that" conversation about future care, which would have made her very cross and unhappy.