Maureen

I have a photo that I brought back from my dad and my stepmums' after a recent visit. It's a photo of my mum when me and my brotheres were still kids. I was 4 and my mum 36.We were on holiday in Wales.My mum is standing in the middle of the picture. Infront there lies a white wooden farm fence that rests to one side, inviting you into the scene.Behind it a golden field, blushed red by the sun.My mum stands in the centre, a slightly distant figure, her face blurred, she looks almost like a painting as her red anorak stands out with a striking stillness.I look at the photo and take a magnifying glass to see her face more clearly.It becomes something like a ghost story as I feel like I'm looking at myself, it could easily be me! Something in her stance, the way she has her hair, the long features.I might even choose the same clothes, but it is her, my mum ,Maureen. What a life she led.

Born in Glasgowin 1929 and grew up in a small fishing village on the East Coast of Scotland in North Beriwick. Daughter of two hard working parents. My grandmother built a comfortable life for her family with blood sweat and a good brain, from nothing to something. My mother and her sister had a good education and wanted for nothing. Being "the black sheep", that someone from the village descibed her, she took herself off to London to The Old Vic Theatre School. She was there for a year before she was thrown out. She reflected years later they may have been testing her metal,but also upon reflection she felt, may never have been able to handle the terrible stage fright that consumed her. I saw her in a one woman play in a fringe theatre when I was 16. I was completely in her world, transfixed for the whole performance.

So she went back to Scotland and began to train as a nurse, of which she had many funny stories.There was always a funny story about something.Whilst she was training to be a nurse she met my dad, tall dark and handsome. They were the same age, but somehow my dad was always older. he taught her about art, music and a whole world of other things. They were smitten. Two bright young things.They got married, a big affair.The knot was tied, but even as they walked down the aisle they began to argue.My dad likes everything in order.My mum couldn't give a fig, just improvise, was always her way.Like chalk and cheese.There was love and three children ,me and my two brothers.By the time the photo was taken it was like "Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf". My mum took to the bottle. She fell apart. I grew up with her depression, disarray and emotional absence for most of my childhood. Through all of that I did feel love from her.Unconditional acceptance,whoever you are, whatever you do,it's ok. She was fun and playful, silly and warm. Sometimes she sang songs to me at night when I was scared and read bedtime stories with an array of characters, she just wasn't always very grown-up!

She worked throughout her life and re-trained as a teacher, she kept on teaching even when she could hardly walk(as her hips gave up on her).She became a supply teacher and had a reputation for taking the "special" classes.We all grew up, one by one we all migrated to Bristol, including my mum.I gave up hoping she would give up the alcohol, never drinking at work, a functioning alcoholic.We had lots of good times around the table, when we would gather for Sunday roasts, with our friends and various partners.My mum always loved an open house.She may have been messy and chaotic, but her home was always open to anyone.

Eventually she retired to a small fishing village in Wales, reminiscent of her home town.It was a new beginning, a clean slate, her final resting place.One day she called me to tell me she was booking herself into a rehab centre for 3 months.I hadn't seen that coming, but I was so proud of her.She worked really hard on herself and even worked in the vegetable garden(a very novel activity for my mum).When I visited her at the centre it was as if 10 years had just fallen away from her.

When she went back to her little flat with the sea view, she never touched another drop of alcohol.She meditated every morning, ordered her desk, cleaned.For the first time in her life she felt like the person she had always wanted to be.She was no longer the sinner she saw herself as.She always made friends wherever she went, the difference for her this time was she got to be the person she wanted to be.She began tutoring from home and became close to a young girl and her family, her neighbours and forged many good frienships in the short time she lived there.She had time to write and swim, two of her loves. She was still my mum,Maureen, talking for England(should that be for Scotland or even Wales?) Full of funny anecdotes.Still making her meals to gather people around the table with the old lace tablecloth that was her mothers, a little stained and frayed.My mum was just the same, just missing the alcohol, she was Maureen ,just more grown up.

A copule of years later my mum was rushed into hospital with acute anemia.By the time it was clear what was wrong with her and after several heavy doses of chemo, it was clear her leukemia was too advanced to save her.Me and my brothers gathered to see her.We were staying at her flat.A call came early one morning to get to the hospital.We dashed out of bed borrowed her friends car.It spluttered up the hills as if it were about to loose all life. Finally we arrived on the ward.We were told the news that she had died in the early hours of the morning.We were led to her bed where she lay motionless behind the curtain, her mouth open as if her soul had flown out of her mouth.She had got to know the staff on the ward and some of the nurses had cried when she died.

I still miss my mum, 28 years on.What she passed on to me is a big heart, the ability to always see the funny side of things and yourself.Never make a promise if you can't keep it, don't hold back from saying sorry.Even when you are all grown up there is no shame in being silly, playful, creative, happy to help anyone and it's never too late to be you. Never an angel, naughty but nice, my mum never lost her sense of humour or her love of people.

Now all these years later, at the grand old age of 60(not such an old age any more), I want to find my place by the sea. A year of covid and a changing planet, I look at her photo, I see me, but I'm not her ,I'm me.I feel her in me, she is in a pocket of my heart and my daughters' and I hope her legacy continues.She was never the Boss Mum.She was never the archetypal mother, keeping house, baking cakes and whatever other out dated idea of what it is to be a mother.My lack of her motherly presence when I was a child gave me freedom to wander and explore, to be self guiding.She passed onto me the ability to love unconditionally, to not put yourself above others, basically to love and right now that's what will make things work, that's what will keep us alive, because without it we are empty. You can have a million pounds in your pocket, but if you don't have love you have nothing!