Freda Rose Parkinson was 96 years old when she died.

For all but the last two years of her life she was an industrious and opinionated citizen of the world in which she lived.

When she was born women did not have the vote, there was civil unrest in the land with gunboats in the Mersey and troops on the streets, and George V celebrated being crowned Emperor of India by going on a tiger shoot.

She lived in the most momentous century of human existence, through wars and poverty and radical change without ever a backward glance, and in the end she didn't die; she gave in.

Inspiration

She was the engine of my ambition.  Her anger at being an intelligent woman yet deprived of a chance of a brighter future by a system that discriminated against all working class children, but particularly women, burned through her life.

Typically, she converted the energy it created into forging her son's ambition.  She filled the house with books, took me to the movies and the theatre, opened the prospect of a life beyond the confines of a pit village.

Similarly, she drove my father on, encouraging him to make the best of a life down a pit.  For a while he went along with the idea, but only because he loved her.

I remember sitting at our kitchen table doing my homework while my mother sat holding a large book on mining engineering, bullying him through exams.

She loved him, and no other, but not like he loved her.  My father loved my mother with a devotion that defied reason but was wonderful to behold. It wasn't that he forgave his wife her faults and accommodated her shortcomings.  He simply didn't see them, which was even more remarkable considering my mother could be a troublesome woman.

Glamorous Mum

Her success at designing knitwear and selling her talents from a council house in a mining village only further convinced her that life had dealt her a lousy hand.  It seemed to me she constantly wished she was somewhere else, somewhere a long way removed from our view of Grimethorpe Colliery.

Like any working class matriarch, she ran the house and our lives according to her rules.  She had a fearsome temper and I remember on one occasion sitting in my wigwam in the garden with my father after we had sought refuge from one of her tantrums, and he suggesting (jokingly) I should go back inside and ask her to join us to smoke a pipe of peace.

On the other hand, I never witnessed her looking less than glamorous, nor ever saw her without admiring the way she took pride in her appearance.

Happy days

I drew strength and confidence from her example and grew into manhood very much the son of my mother. It took me a journey into later life to become more like my father, or I hope that is what happened.

Her happiest days were spent living in her cottage in Oxfordshire, which is where they relocated after my father retired.  They relished their grandchildren, started travelling abroad, and never missed a chance to attend a recording of my talk show, where my mother, who was a terrible flirt, would flutter her eyelashes at the likes of James Stewart and Henry Fonda.

Coping at home

She was a widow for a third of her life and dealt with her grief and her solitude in a typically practical and resolute way.  She took a summer job working in a holiday home she had visited with my father; she delivered Meals on Wheels, and visited care homes where she gave beauty treatments to old people.

She travelled abroad with friends, never losing her enjoyment of savouring the world, and grew closer to her sister Madge and her husband Jim.  She lived by herself and resisted any form of outside help, such as a daily home help, until she was in her 90s.

Swift decline

She walked a mile or more every day of her life and was in her late 80s before a series of events led to me persuading her to stop driving.  The end came when, after parking in a deserted street in Oxford and finding herself boxed in when she returned, she endeavoured to shunt her way out of trouble.  I was rung by a car owner incandescent with rage at having his car battered by an octogenarian road hog.

Ever after she went by public transport, turning down any other sensible alternative, such as a taxi.It was because she was so independent and mettlesome that her swift decline into senility became so wretched to witness.

Compassion

It started with what might be termed ordinary forgetfulness in a person in her 90s, and she began telling us of imagined visitors ... a child, a cat, a family who spent all their time getting drunk in the pub across the way, keeping her awake at night.

Then she started wandering.  A young policeman called me at 2am. He had found my mother in her dressing gown walking the streets looking for my father.

He had taken her home and made her a cup of tea.  They were getting along fine. He sat with her until we arrived.  He was kind and considerate and treated my mother with a great deal of respect, something that was not always forthcoming from some of the professionals when my mother entered the care system.

I always remembered the compassion of that policeman, and the memory of what he did was a reason why, after my mother died, I became Ambassador for Dignity in Care, and part of a campaign to improve attitudes towards the elderly.

Humorous episodes

As her mind deteriorated she became increasingly angered at what she recognised as her growing inability to run her own life.  She, who had delivered Meals on Wheels, started receiving them.  She objected to being called ‘Dear' or ‘Ducky' and other such terms of endearment, which she took to indicate she was slightly gaga.  She hated being addressed in a loud voice when her hearing was perfect. In other words, she objected to being regarded as decrepit.

There were humorous episodes.  She started imagining that my father had returned but was spending all his time getting drunk at the pub. She would wait up for him and, on one or two occasions, rang the pub, asking the baffled landlord to return her husband forthwith before she came across and sorted them both out.

Care choices

I tried to explain to her that she was imagining things, but she countered my arguments with irrefutable logic.  I told her that my father didn't drink, so why would he be found in a pub getting sloshed?  What is more, I said, Dad had died 30 years ago.

"Your Dad's dead?" she said. She never called him ‘my husband' always ‘your Dad'.  I said that was the case.

"Well no one told me," she said.

I was thinking about this when she delivered the line to which there was no answer.

"If your father is dead," she said, "then who did I climb over to get out of bed this morning?"

We took her home, but we couldn't cope.

Creative connection

She seemed even more confused and disorientated and her occasional bouts of incontinence made her ashamed and deeply unhappy.  She went into a nursing home near where she lived with a view of trees and a garden with statues.  One day, looking at a statue, she said, "he's been standing there for ages. I don't know what he's doing."

Normal conversation was impossible so one day, knowing her love of Frank Sinatra and the Great American Songbook, I played a CD in the car.  She sang every lyric just about word perfect. She, who could barely recognise her own son or remember where she lived, could recall every lyric she had memorised as a young woman.

CBE

In the end, as I say, she gave up.  She didn't like what she had become, so she hid her medication under the bed and, most tellingly of all, stopped caring about her appearance.  We went to Australia to fulfil a contract, but I always knew I would receive the call bringing me back.  And that is what happened, but too late to say our final goodbyes.  In effect we had already done that a year or so beforehand when we still recognised each other.

I owed her so much and my book is a testament to her ambition, which she regarded as being fulfilled, as I finally understood, when we took her to Buckingham Palace in 2000 to receive my CBE.  When she reached the palace door and was asked for her ticket, she discovered she had lost it.

She looked at the man on the door, chin jutting and eyes blazing, and explained, "but I'm Mike Parkinson's Mum".

I withered with embarrassment.

"Of course you are," said the kind man, and let her in.

A message from Sir Michael for New Zealand families

Since I joined the Dignity in Care Campaign as its National Dignity Ambassador, thousands more people have joined as Dignity Champions.  Some, like me, were inspired to do so from personal experience.  For many it is through a professional desire to do their utmost to give the people they support the best possible care.  Together, we are united in our efforts to create a care system that has compassion and respect for those using its services.

As Dignity Ambassador, I have seen some excellent care and met some truly inspirational people.  But, I have also heard about people being left without sufficient food or water and people suffering the inhumanity of lack of privacy during the most personal intimate care.  Surely, in our supposed progressive society, that this happens in our care system is unthinkable.  But it would seem not!

It is rare I come across anyone who hasn't got their own dignity story.  There is no doubt it is a key issue not only for people using health and social care services but also for their carers and families.

Dignity in Care was established by Britain's Department of Health to monitor care standards and promote dignity in care for ill and elderly people.

Sir Michael Parkinson was asked to become the National Dignity Ambassador by the previous Minister for Care Services, Ivan Lewis.

He accepted the role after developing strong views about care standards while supporting his elderly Mum.

He will release his first report as Dignity Ambassador in January 2010.

Dignity In Care's website features an online best practice guide for services, and many other articles and resources about dignity in care, and issues relating to care standards.www.dignityincare.org.uk

We thank Sir Michael for allowing us to share his Mum's story.  You can buy Parky at bookstores nationally.  It is also available at libraries.