As I’m writing this, it is almost 5 years to the minute that I last spoke to my mum. She was in hospital and planning to go home. Ok the doctors weren’t planning on her going home for another week or so, but mum was stubborn. A battle of wills was brewing. I can’t remember what we talked about that evening. How often is that the case. I can remember being given a shopping list to fill her home refrigerator – remember she was going home.

We didn’t see the overnight relapse coming.

Yes I really miss her. My sibling do as well. She was the gravity that held us together.

But I’m not sad. Not today. She would have used a Yorkshire cricket expression – ‘had a long innings‘. She did. Lots of great memories. Lots of smiles. That’s what I see now. And today lots of ‘tea and biscuits’. That’s exactly what you got every time you went to see mum. Within seconds you found a biscuit in your hand, as if by magic. Even if you were on a diet that biscuit founds it’s way into your hand. Followed by a reassuring ‘that diet can start tomorrow, how about a piece of apple pie…”

60 thoughts on “5 years”

  11. Short, but potent. A great post, and yep – those tricky biscuits appearing alongside almost everything! Trying to savour time left with my family, reading this just made me realise I need to call my nan. Take care

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  12. Looking back to visiting my mum, I realise I became the person who left home at 18 every time I walked in the door. She took over satisfying all my culinary and rehydration needs even if by the end of that long innings – she got caught out by the new ball in the last over – she was 84 and I was 55. I’d sit at the table while kettles, pans etc were all magicked out of cupboards… Happy memories. Thanks for that prompt

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  19. Sounds like you had a lovely, traditional English Mum. Mine was English and also very kind but she was there and I was here and she became deaf, so I don’t remember the last words I spoke to her. Toward the end, she was hospitalized and my brother, home from Africa, went to see her . She cheerfully told him I’d been in that morning. I was in NY at the time, but somehow I got comfort from it.

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