The thing is, she was a very beautiful person, immensely important in my life, my family’s life, and probably quite significant in many of the people’s lives that knew.
Sad it is that she’s gone, but it’s also good. She had a very painful cancer at the end, and she’d been in pain with crap legs for years before. She was always stalwart with adversity, preferring to view life through a filter that was set to only allow the positive to dwell in her consciousness.
It is this filter, the ability to view life as an adventure regardless of how mediocre it may be, that I have been blessed to inherit from her, and which I’m doing my level best to pass on to my own kids. That perspective alone has allowed me to overcome all manner of hardships in my own life, and truly ‘live’ it as if (like her) I needed nothing more. Yes, she always dreamt of winning the pools, and for years she did the thing religiously for the ‘pools man’ who came around on a Saturday night, but it would have been icing on an already perfect cake for her (she’d have just divvied it up around the family) She was the epitome of motherhood.
Looking back, even the uncertainty that I felt of myself when I was a teen and in my twenties was only confusion from the conflicting messages that I was getting from other people about what they wanted me to be. My identity was never really something that I questioned. I KNEW I was OK because she’d always made me feel that way. NO QUESTION. I knew I wasn't gorgeous, or particularly clever, or better than other people in some significant way …but I knew that I was OK because she constantly made me feel like that I was, and that OK meant everything I needed to be.
Secure in that certainty, and with my filter up and running, I have been lucky to be, for the most part, very happy indeed. OK, I've had some good breaks too… like being a father to 4 wonderful kids and I'm married to my soul-mate, but I put a big slice of the responsibility for my happiness on my Mum.
Thanks for 'setting me up' so sweetly Mum. I’ll always hold you in my heart, as you always did me in yours.
This picture of Mum's hands was taken a couple of weeks before she died. When I look at them I just feel warmth and remember how gentle they were.
