A resident of the retirement home where I work is almost 80 years old. Her mother, who is almost 100 years old, lives in another care home. In conversations between the daughter and me, it came up again and again that she had suffered all her life from her mother's (apparent) emotional coldness. Despite this, she kept visiting her mother, which I encouraged her to do, even though it had become very stressful due to her age. Her mother recently passed away. When the resident came back from her mother's funeral, I dropped in for a quick visit. The woman told me about the funeral, her mother's life and the last conversations in which many things had come up that had been on both their minds. With tears in her eyes, she said: ‘My mum told me for the first time in my life that she loved me!’ Tears came to my eyes too.
