It’s Mothering Sunday today, which is British Mother’s day, which is a church holiday, which is why Mother’s day is in May in every other English-speaking country. Mothering Sunday was originally the day when people went back to their ‘mother church’ or in other words, it was the one day a year posh people’s servants were allowed to go home and visit their families.
I went to church, because I’m a fully paid up God botherer and I’m in the choir and I came home with three rather lovely polyanthuses, which I shall plant in the garden.
This Sunday also has another name, ‘Refreshment Sunday’ which was a give-us-a-break-from-the-sackcloth-and-ashes day in the middle of lent. At my church, it also happened to be the 50th wedding anniversary of a lovely couple so the refreshments in question were cake and prosecco (om-nom-nom). All very jolly.
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Mum.
This is the second Mothering Sunday without my mother and the first without McOther’s. I was thinking about how I felt which was alright, actually. I am still perennially knackered but I have a lot more energy these days, and most of the knackeredness is because I’m eating the wrong things I suspect. I need to take a bit of a pull at myself as I’ve slightly fallen off the healthy eating wagon this week.
Mentally, that’s alright too. I still think about Mum, well, both my parents a lot. It was kind of reassuring after she died to discover how turgid all the admin and paperwork was without Mum at the centre. I’m glad I realised, while she was alive, that her gentle presence in the middle of it all is what made it worthwhile. I’m glad I could see that at the time and I’m especially glad that I clocked it enough to relax in the moment with her on my visits and just enjoy being with her. She was, as she would have said, ‘a darling’.
It also got me thinking, I have a particular memory early on in the whole dementia business, when I was going to see Mum and Dad often but hadn’t settled into the routine of every Wednesday. Or perhaps it was a family thing and we were all down to stay at the house. I’m not sure. It’s not really the point here, I was dispatched to the vegetable garden to pick runner beans. I lost myself, moving backwards and forward along the row—frequently changing position to ensure I searched the climbing tent of bean plants from all angles, the better to spot the tasty treasures hanging within.
As I worked I forgot about everything else. A massive bee droned by and I paused to enjoy its progress as it trundled past, heading haphazardly towards the cabbages. Utterly in the moment, I forgot to be sad. A sense of uncomplicated happiness wrapped itself around me like a well-worn coat before I remembered that actually, things weren’t so great and I wasn’t like that now. I’d caught a glimpse of something through a forest, a tiny snapshot from a forgotten time that I could hardly recall, when happiness like that was my default state. A time when life was uncomplicated and the web of other people’s love which upheld me was solid and true, and unmarked by anything.
It was a sliver of something I hankered to return to, in the middle of a situation when I could never have it. Caught up in a world of sadness and concern that felt as if it was going to go on forever, it shocked me to realise it was lost. It was the most potent feeling. In some respects it made me sadder but I tried to see it as the gift of momentary respite it was and carry it with me.
Over ten years later, this morning, in church, I felt a mix of emotions as I sat and thought about things. And then, along with those thoughts came another weird glimpse of a life in reverse. Sure I miss my parents. When I look around the world as it is today, it still feels as if the light has died. But at the same time, I don’t miss watching them suffer. I don’t miss the heart-breaking sadness, or the life spent on tenterhooks, waiting for the disaster to fall and the call to come, waiting to drop everything and drive 150 miles in the middle of the night to pick up the pieces.
As I thought about it all, I realised that I am a lot closer to the cheerful happy person I was before this all blew up. There are a few things I regret, I had looked out a stack of books I thought I might bring home and never went back for them. I meant to grab some of my mother’s paintings and I forgot to do it on my last trip down there. I found a beautiful vellum document which was my great grandfather’s certificate of ordination. That was Dad’s grandfather. I decided to leave it for now, think on it and maybe collect it later. I never got back there so that’s gone too.
Finally, on the book shelves, I remember finding two leather bound bibles, both in a terrible state of disrepair with pages falling out, the spines hanging off and chunks of pages. One had a maroon leather cover, the New Standard Version, that had been my father’s. The second had a black leather cover and was similarly in pieces. That had belonged to my grandfather (my mother’s father). I think that was the 1600s original translation, which is mind-blowingly well written. Bizarrely, now I’ve had time to think about it, if you asked me what I would have rescued from the house if it was on fire, those two bibles would be one of the first things I’d have picked. And I left them? Why the fuck did I do that?
Two items that were precious to and venerated by people I loved and admired. Knobhead. Then again, I did manage to get almost all of the other inconsequential things that had stories; including the plants and they’ve survived the winter. So there’s that.
Also on the upside, I have the lodestar; my Mum’s engagement ring. I wear it all the time and in it is wrapped up everything about the people my parents were and the person I believe I should try and be. It was picked with love by Dad and worn daily by Mum. It reminds me of the light; their laughter their sense of mischief, the way they took the piss out of one another. It tells of their open-hearted acceptance of others, their kindness, their empathy. It reminds me that they are OK and that I now carry the light and that I will just have to voraciously read (and destroy the binding) on my own bloody bible. It shouldn’t be that hard to read it more often and I have copies of both editions for fuck’s sake.
And these days, instead of feeling as if the light has gone out and there’s a void where my parents should be, it’s as if I stand on solid ground and they, and the light, are there round me.
It’s alright.