Remember Me? Discovering My Mother as She Lost Her Memory

In this deeply moving yet humorous memoir, Shobna Gulati sets out to reclaim her mother's past after her untimely death, and in turn discovers a huge amount about herself and their relationship. What ensues is a story of cultural assimilation, identity and familial shame, as well as a testament to the enduring power of the mother-daughter bond.
REMEMBER ME?captures the powerful emotions that these memories hold, secrets they had collectively buried and the role of shame in both her own life and in the concealment of her mother's dementia.

SHOBNA GULATI is an award-winning actor, dancer, choreographer and presenter, working across theatre, dance, film, radio and televison. She became a household name for her role as Anita in Victoria Wood's dinner ladies and as Sunita, in Coronation Street. Her film credits include the BAFTA award-winning Shadow scan and Everybody's talking about Jamie

This is a story of things that are lost, but also of things that can be found in the most unexpected of places. It is a story of the things you remember and the things you think you have forgotten, the stories we then tell ourselves and what we choose to share with others. It is my story and it is my mother's, and it is about being her daughter. It is about the function of memory within the human construct of time, where we give our daily lives a beginning, a middle and an end. It is also a story about the assumption of shame and the presumption of it too, and of bias and prejudice, based only on the shades of our Brown skins.
We spend our entire lives trying to figure out the rudimentary questions: Who are we when we are with others, and when we are alone? Whose lives have we affected?

I have already remembered my m y mother, for me and for you. It helped me; in my ongoing grief, it was cathartic-and our story resonated with you, for which I will be forever grateful. I wanted our story to comfort you too.
I was asked to write this Foreword for the 2022 edition of my book. Yet I sit here, fingers poised to type, and am faced with a wall. My memory lies inside, you see, and alongside there are vast waves of sorrow shored up against that wall of remembrance; it is my reservoir of grief that threatens to spill over, without warning, without any change in the weather. It is difficult, I'm struggling to write.
But this has always been about the love for my mum. And I need to bring her back again.
In Remember Me? I did just that. From her beginnings, her childhood, her life as a young woman, a married woman, a mother, a widow, a grandmother, to a woman with health issues and, finally, a woman with dementia.