It’s four years since my mother died. She was 89 years old, and never thought of herself as being a day over twenty-one.
I am now sitting in the chair she used to sit in. She looks out at me from a photograph on the windowsill behind me. She is smiling, as always.
Everything about her is captured in that photograph. She was beautiful. I am present to her charm, her curiosity, her innocence, her gentleness, her humility, her serenity, her kindness and her love.
I miss her. Just writing this brings tears to my eyes. Yes, I really miss her.
I miss her unconditional love. I don’t believe I truly understood that until she was no longer here, being it, expressing it, smiling, listening, loving me.
My mother was and still is the source of my life. I am who I am because she was (is) who she was (is).
I say ‘is’ because so much of her is still here, in my home, in my heart, in my thoughts, memories and every conversation I have about her. She smiles at me from every photograph. Her image lives in every chair she sat in, at the table where she ate, at the cooker she stood at contentedly preparing food, at the sink she stood at happily washing dishes, in the sunroom reading her book, in the sitting room watching the TV programmes she enjoyed.
We shared so many interests – in politics, current affairs, nature, the world and our love of country. As her only daughter we shared a lifetime of robust mother-daughter ‘moments’. We argued, we cried, we laughed, we fought and we agreed to disagree.
After my dad died in 1997 she was bereft. It took her a few years to find again that courage and confidence that she had lost earlier in life. She became my tentative travel companion and, in her 80’s, we shared some wonderful holidays in Paris, Rome, Vienna, Vancouver and Medjugorje. She was more than willing to adventure; she was delightfully curious.
It was a profound privilege to have had her live with me for eighteen months before she moved into a nursing home, and be with her sister, for her final days.
Again this year I will celebrate my Mother’s Day with her, here in my own home, sitting in our chair, looking into her smiling eyes and allowing myself again to get present to her love. What a Gift. Thank you Mum. I love you.
