My mother, (suffering with Demantia) has been sharing our home for two years. Her condition is gradually becoming more and more difficalt, short term memory almost gone, finds moving round the house confusing and recently thinks she is living in her childhood home. I have information about her childhood that I have gleaned from her cousin( they will both be 90 this year) I can read my father's autobiography, published in 2000 so know where he was during the WW2 years.I knew that mum joined the Womens Royal Airforce in 1943 but have no knowledge about where she was stationed or what happened to her at that time. One of her carers sugested a memory book to help mum recall the past and I explained that we have this big gap!
However when my father died I found a box containing letters that mum had sent to him during the war. They were ,to my mind, private and I put them away in mum's dressing table. When I told the carer she was delighted" you have the key to her past!! Read them, use them for the memory book!!"
I have over 200 letters, sorted into dated order , I am gradually typing them onto my laptop,yesterday I went onto google and showed mum the house where she was billeted in the North of England, she at once told me the name of the landlady, and remembered " square bashing" ( learning to March) on Morecombe seafront!! Together we can start to relive this beautiful nineteen year old leaving home for the first time, waiting for my father to return from malta to get married in December 1943 and then he was posted back to Corsica and Italy till the end of the war. It also opens up the history of her brothers and sisters much to the delight of my cousins who were equally in the dark about this part of our family history.
Just wondered if anyone else has found a similar archive and what your thoughts are?
Being selfish, we have had rather a difficalt year healthwise Billy and I, I am really finding this an exiting project and an escape from the present into a very fasinating past.

Wendy