What I am going to say has been 3 weeks in the drafting, but 55 years in the making. I cannot do justice to who Mum was and what she meant to us all in just a few minutes. Please forgive me for that.
The painful daily statistics suggest that 19 January 2021 may have been the worst day of all.
A day of over 1,800 UK deaths from Covid-19; and Mum was one of them.
We know that, and it hurts that the pandemic has taken Mum from us. But I shall not dwell on that. We knew, and she knew, that she had progressive and incurable Parkinson’s disease, so her time still with us was already limited.
Mum always dreaded the prospect of a really long, drawn out decline. She was more at peace with the idea of slipping away to avoid that, and in a way that is what she did, after giving us precious days to sit with her in her room, remind her how much she was loved, and say our goodbyes.
I wrote this on the Parkinson’s UK page:
- “Mum was kind, clever, funny, generous, warm, sensible and loving”; and this
- “Mum has left behind a large … family and very many friends, all of whom knew her and will remember her as one of the finest people they had the good fortune to know.”
Mum was clever. As she would say of others, she was a “really smart cookie”. I knew that. Those who were at school with her remember that, as do those who trained with her at Guy’s Hospital, those who worked with her at Gartnavel General, and those who worked with her as a Senior Radiographer in Breast Screening, which was the final and favourite part of her working career. She did not go to university, though she was easily bright enough and achieved the academic record for it. She was at or near the top of her year at what was then the Newport County Secondary Grammar School; and that smartness was part of what my Dad Gordon found so attractive and led to years of happiness together even if not a whole lifetime.
I think it was not just the culture of the time that led Mum, like many clever girls of her generation, to what were then the non-graduate teaching or healthcare professions, in Mum’s case radiography. I am sure that was part of it. But there was also a strong streak of gentle non-competitiveness about Mum – she did not need to be a ‘high achiever’ to find joy and be content.
She loved playing games – Scrabble, Canasta, other card games, board games – but she delighted in the game and the joy of human company. She was not occupied by a great desire to win or dislike for losing. She liked nothing better than collaborating around a 1,000 piece jigsaw at Christmas and just being happy together.
It was the same at work. She had no great ambition except to do the job as best she could – which of course meant very well indeed – and to treat every patient with kindness and respect. What mattered was being the valued colleague, the loyal friend, the mother hen, the mischievous ray of sunshine in the staff room.
And so she delighted in the success of others, at work and elsewhere. Philippa asked me what I loved most about Mum and I found myself saying it was that she just thought the world of me. I know that sounds selfish; but it was my way of trying to say how she was. I was special to her, of course, as her baby boy; but the wider truth is that it went to Mum’s core to care for people, especially those around and close to her, and to find that their happiness brought her joy enough and beyond for herself.
She was also, in her gentle way, quite intrepid. Over nearly 20 years in retirement before becoming physically frail, there were any number of walking trips and sightseeing holidays around the UK and Europe. The one sadness in that was that she could not share those later adventures with my step-Dad John. They met as single parents in the early 1970s, love blossomed, and years of happy married life together followed, cruelly cut short when step-Dad died in 1990, only 60 years old.
That love of travel and quiet adventure was always there, I think. Her schoolfriends Jill Simpson and Dave Hiles remember how much she enjoyed an Island Schools’ holiday to Innsbruck in 1954; then at 16, she and Jill set off together, just the two of them, for a cycling holiday in Holland. It feels like I should say “Can you imagine …?”, or something like that. But actually, knowing Mum, it’s not hard to imagine. Understated, but pretty fearless! Like an epic long drive from Bearsden to the Isle of Wight, Mum, two boys, Bess the dog and Pepper the cat squashed into her 1971 Fiat 500 – DYS 550 K – to stay at Kenmore with Granny and Grandad Wendes, for one of the rather idyllic summer holidays we enjoyed here on the Island, in the company of our brilliant cousins, who knew and loved and remember Mum as a most caring and attentive Aunty Ann.
Cheeky and fun too. Mum loved to laugh. Quick witted word-play, puns and sniggering over double entendres were the best. So, for example, being a highly skilled and experienced member of a key, life-saving, NHS service was, for Mum, to be a ‘knocker squasher’, after the realities of getting a good quality image.
From Breast Screening to a well deserved retirement; and in retirement, a kind neighbour, a great friend, and above all else a most fabulous grandmother. That became Mum’s long and rather wonderful prime, and 11 grandchildren, all now splendid young adults, know they had the best Grandma or Granny Annie that anyone could ever wish for.
It feels like I have only just got going; but time is against me. So I pause finally to remember Mum’s love of music. She spent a life of 82 years loving to listen to music, live and recorded, and to sing. She had a lovely singing voice, good enough for a high standard of amateur musical theatre and many happy years with the Kirkintilloch Ladies Choir. I loved singing with her, in church, in the car, with the radio on. I recorded what Simon is about to play [Amazing Grace, vv.1, 3, 4 & 5], with Ellis on piano, in memory of all that. Josh Groban it ain’t, but it is my way of trying to say, ‘Mum, I thought the world of you too!’
