Daily Telegraph, 24 December 2022

Last Carols with Mum

By Ed Balls

I’ll never forget my last Christmas with Mum before she moved into a care home. Her dementia was getting worse. It had started to take hold around 2005 and over the years my dad steadily had to take control over many more aspects of their lives, which was tough for both of them, as she had always been the matriarch, the person who held everything together. But by 2017 - that last Christmas we shared - Mum was completely dependent on Dad and her carers, and very different from how she used to be. She was quieter, calmer, and more passive. We lived with her in the moment, while mourning all we had lost. 

Christmas had always been a special time for our family - presents in pillowcases, hearty carol singing and ‘The Great Escape’ on television. That final year we wanted to make it special but also as comfortable as possible for her.

The day started as it always did, with our kids coming into our bedroom to open their Christmas stockings. (An ongoing dispute for 20 years because when I was growing up we had pillowcases but my wife Yvette [Cooper]’s family had football socks.) Their cousins stayed over the night before, Yvette’s parents arrived early, and everyone gathered at 7.30am to open their presents from Father Christmas by the fire. I then fried everyone an English breakfast before getting started on lunch.

In all, we had 24 guests including my mum and dad, my sister Joanna, brother Andrew and their children, plus our own three kids and all my in-laws. In order to fit everyone around the table, we bought two large sheets of plywood and set them up as a makeshift table, covered with Christmassy material from John Lewis.

Cooking for 24 is a logistical challenge - prepping, juggling, trying to keep calm despite the stream of people trickling in and out of the kitchen. I’d prepared a smoked salmon mousse and laid out the ingredients for 24 cheese souffles the day before. On Christmas morning I started on the meat – a goose barbecued outside on our Big Green Egg, a turkey crown roasted in the oven - then the souffles and Yorkshire puddings took turns to rise. Meanwhile, the Christmas pudding that I'd made in November steamed away in the corner.

At midday my parents arrived. Mum was typically bewildered by all the commotion, and we set up a space in an upstairs bedroom where she could sit with Dad, away from the noise. One by one, her six grandchildren went to sit with her and went through her photo albums of past family gatherings – birthdays, anniversaries, holidays – which she pours over hour upon hour, day after day, continually discovering the photos as if for the first time. It was lovely seeing our children showing such patience and kindness with her. 

By the time we started lunch at 4pm, we had already watched White Christmas, half of Some Like it Hot, and Queen Elizabeth’s Christmas message. It was wildly noisy, everyone laughing and chatting, passing dishes and tureens and complaining there wasn’t enough gravy. (There was!) I worried that it would all be too much for Mum, who was very subdued, but she ate everything set before her, a good sign. Nestled between her grandchildren in the middle of the table, she was once again the matriarch that day – not because she behaved like one any more, but because that’s how we all wanted it to be. 

With the pudding eaten, my brother and I spontaneously broke out into a hymn: ‘In the Bleak MidWinter’. Mum smiled and began to sing too, the lyrics miraculously streaming back to her. We sang ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem’ next, then ‘Lord of Hopefulness’ and we could all see the music stirring familiar, calming memories within her. It was an emotional moment. Best of all, Mum was happy, a huge relief.

Learning to live with a loved one with dementia is so hard. It demands great patience, a laser focus on the here and now, never talking about future plans. A year earlier, my brother had booked a minibus and the whole extended family spent a day driving Mum around Norwich to the places where she grew up: her old house, her former school, the church where she married Dad. Though she couldn’t articulate how she felt, tears rolled down her cheeks and we knew that she was recognising these places, remembering past times - good and bad.

One of the things that made me nervous, on that last Christmas together, was the unfamiliarity for her: we were at my house, not hers; it was so much bigger, with many more people than past Christmases - and we had a goose, which she certainly never cooked. But the picture books and the singing gave her great pleasure. We’d had long discussions with Dad in the weeks beforehand about whether we could make Christmas work for her and by the end of the day it was clear that we had pulled it off, which was important to him too.

This Christmas will be very different. Mum now lives in a care home and tomorrow [SUBS: CHRISTMAS DAY] she’ll travel to Dad’s house in a special taxi and they’ll have lunch together with her carer. 

We’ll visit separately in the days before - she couldn’t cope with all the noise of a big family Christmas. But as I baste the turkey and worry about the Yorkshire puddings, Mum will be at my shoulder, whispering chiding encouragement in my ear. And when the pudding is cleared and the carols begin, we will be singing for her and with her, remembering past happy times and giving thanks for all the gifts she has given us. 

As told to Claudia Rowan. Appetite: A Memoir in Recipes of Family and Food is out in paperback (Simon & Schuster, £8.99)