Mother

My Mother passed away in April 2007 at the time I felt nothing. Even now I feel little emotion and am unaware of pain. Yet somehow it is occuring to me of late that she was the most remarkable woman that ever lived. Maybe I never knew my Mother. She never showed me the physical affection that I often craved. On at least one occasion she repeatedly told me I wasn't coming home when I was screaming in desperation. I don't know what it was all about.

I sometimes wonder if I ever really knew my Mother. How much was there trapped within her that I never saw? How well did my Father know her? For much of her life she lived to help and support my Father. In the final years as she became weaker and more confused the roles were reversed. My Father was her sole carer in her final times and probably the best she could have had. If my Father could have total, unrestricted control over someone or something he was amazing. Could this possibly be a form of divine justice? My mother was not too dissimilar to a child at the end. I remember as a small child my Father playing with me as a child with my Mother in the background.

My Mother started to be a care worker in when I became partially independant at 10 or 11.. At the time they were called Mentally Subnormal or Mentally Retarded. Mentally Handicapped was an advanced term . They did ,however,, clap with applause when she started a shift. She also wrote a novel that I never saw and poetry on pieces of scrap paper. It was very depressing and often got screwed up shortly afterwards. When I did my English degree I bought a copy of James Joyce's Ulysses, I didn't understand a word of it. She never had an education in any formal sense but was able to explain it all to me. When she was young she ran a book shop.

My Mother had a love of Opera and had Maddame Butterfly and La boheme and others on vinyl. I never really understood Opera it was often sung in Italian for a start. When I was about 12 I first heard her Operatic type voice. It had been dormant for many years and remained so afterwards.

When I went shopping with her she would talk to many people even those who didn't seem keen. Easily upset I would have walked off at the slightest snub - she persevered. When I went out with her she would always introduce me.'this is my son.' As a teenager I would resent it. As an adult I appreciated it. In her final years it was 'my Son - a Psychiatric Nurse in Cambridge' until Psychiatric Nurse and Cambridge became meaningless concepts too her.

She would stumble and fall and it became more frequent. Eventually it was just to the front gate where she would wave at passers by. After this she was restricted to the fall walls of the bungalow. Even then she seemed perfectly happy.

She told me that as a child she was frightened of the Lord's prayer the words 'forever and ever' scared her.

Perhaps I never really knew my Mother. Perhaps I might in the hereafter?