When my mum was younger she was such a busy person, she had a variety of different jobs, secretary, school dinner lady (why are they never called lunch ladies?), barmaid and she would sometimes do a little bit of cleaning for neighbours or feed their pets when they were away. There wasn’t a single day of my childhood that we didn’t have a hot meal, maybe not always from scratch, Mr Brains Faggots and Findus crispy pancakes would feature occasionally but most of the time she’d cook something time consuming after being at work all day. We didn’t have a car so she would have to carry the food shopping back, her palms often red from where the plastic bags had been digging in. She would take evening classes in bizarre things like making pictures out of copper and rush off to meet friends, especially my lovely Godmother, Jo, who died a few years ago just after her one hundredth birthday. Also my friend’s mum, R, who herself sadly now has memory problems and stoically dealt with breast cancer in her late eighties, making less fuss than I would over a stubbed toe. My Mum spoke to R on the phone most Sundays until a couple of years ago but now their forty plus year friendship seems to have been erased from both their memories.

Jo, or Josephine, was about twelve years older than my mum and had never married. Her fiancé had been killed during the war. They met when they both worked for a Greek shipping company. Jo lived on the top two floors of a beautiful terraced town house in Pimlico, her brother and his wife lived on the lower floors. Mum, myself and my twin brother would take The Tube into London to visit Jo, sometimes staying for a few days in the summer. I think my Dad must have been on one of his Open University summer course at this point. In the summer we would go to St James’ Park and Kensington Gardens. In the winter we would go and see the Christmas lights and the Selfridges windows. We’d catch the number 24 bus from Victoria. Jo and her sisters, Baba and Pat, would visit us at our little semi in Hornchurch and my mum would get flustered, cleaning madly before they arrived. She would always cook a huge roast. Jo would always wear one of her many navy blue dresses, usually from Peter Jones. Happy days. Jo died in a nursing home during the pandemic, I couldn’t even attend her funeral. She didn’t know who I was when I last visited her but she looked at a picture of Mum and said “that’s my friend”. It was very moving.

This post has rather gone off tangent but what I wanted to write about was how sad it is when the last time for doing something you loved has been and gone and perhaps you haven’t even realised. Mum will never go into London again, will never see her friend Jo again, never see R again, never cook a roast again (although she helps Dad prepare their meal every evening by peeling the vegetables) . She’ll never again come striding into view, weighed down by grocery shopping. But she is still here. Maybe she can only walk a few steps and perhaps she doesn’t really know what is going on but she and Dad still love each other and still follow their little routines. She still sounds happy to hear my voice when I ring. Less happy to see me in person because she doesn’t like me doing their housework. Life has become very small for Mum and therefore for Dad also, but it is still worth living. Find time to do what you love while you can.

Thank you for reading,

Samantha

Cover Photo by Pawel Czerwinski on Unsplash

Photo of Pimlico by Lisa van Vliet on Unsplash