Missing mum
IT'S Mother's Day again and I still miss her.
I always smile when I think of my mum. Although I didn't smile much when I thought she was an old fashioned fuddyduddy. But as I grew up and had children of my own, together we would try to make sense of toddlers tantrums and teenage fads.
She did a fair bit of lip pursing and tutting, so she must have disapproved of my approach to parenting at times, and I expect her cronies at the Townswomen's Guild heard them all. For 40 or so years my mum and her friends drifted into old age and put the world to rights every Wednesday night.
A year or so after her death I found myself grinning on the bus after some amusing incident and thinking "I can't wait to tell mum when I get home".
She loved a good joke or a bit of scandal like the time when she and her friend, both staunch churchgoers discovered that the local vicar was gay. Her friend, a spinster, was shocked to the core. Not my mum, she was curious and asked me what exactly did gays do in private.
At 18 I'd only just found out myself, but I gave her the low down - she said nothing but on went the hat and off she rushed to tell her friend who almost fainted at the news.
Years later at 88 she had a blood clot in her leg and we went to the hospital for the last time. Even 17 years ago we waited in the corridor for five hours overnight before receiving any pain relief or treatment.
She was in a lot of pain but never lost her sense of humour, The last joke we shared was on that trolley in the cold, dark corridor. As she looked at the huge haematoma on her shin (about as big as a plum) she said: "Oh well, it could have been worse, it could have been piles!"
Happy Mother's Day mum, I'm still missing you.