Remembering my mother

And other lovely things this week

Yesterday it was twenty years since my mother died. She was fifty-four years old. I was thirty, my sister twenty-one. Too young for all of us. And it’s funny how things that happened ten years ago feel indecently recent but her death feels like it happened at another time, almost to another person.

In some ways, it did. Because the death of someone so close to you, changes you. In grief, you enter an altered state, and you never completely leave it but absorb it somehow, into the deep strata of your soul. The loss of my mother lies in me like molten lava, occasionally erupting to the surface.

Georgina had been ill for twelve years before she died, with multiple sclerosis, and early onset dementia. The bewildered feelings of bereavement set in early, too. At fifty-four she had the sunken cheeks and wrinkles of an octogenarian and had not been able to verbally communicate for a number of years. It was hard to know what she knew or thought about anything, unless she gave a sudden smile. I think she always recognised me but if I went to see her two days in a row, she wouldn’t remember the day before.

All of this was numbingly sad. But I don’t think about it too much. I close myself off from it, perhaps. I don’t, in truth, often mark the anniversary of her death. I prefer to remember her birthday. And every day I remember her when she was alive and well. Because it was her alive-ness that was so beautiful, so vivid, so warm. The only two jokes she could ever remember still make me cry with laughter, as they did her. When the tears start rolling down my cheeks and my chest heaving, I feel her doing the same. I can remember the feeling of sitting on her lap as a small girl, my head resting on her chest, feeling her voice vibrate, the scent of cigarettes and jasmine. The absolute love and safety that she wrapped around me, whenever she was near. Those are the feelings pre-grief, and they feel nearer to me than anything else about her. I am grateful for that.

I miss her like hell. Once or twice a year, I think about the fact that I can’t call my mum and talk about what happened that day, or tell her about her grandson (who has inherited her wonderful sense of the absurd). And it makes me feel a quick, sharp pain of rage and sadness. The tears come and go fast because I think grief likes to take you by surprise. It’s not in the church or looking at photographs. It’s their favourite chocolate bar in the corner shop, or catching your reflection in a window – as if they’d looked at you sidelong. These brief, willo-the-wisp moments.

I saw a clip of Jane Fonda in an interview, accepting applause for being eighty-seven years of age. ‘Anyone can be young,’ she said, smiling. ‘But the lucky get to be old.’

It’s true. But even in her brief five and half decades, my mother shone. She rose above commonplace youth. I don’t mean like those who manage extraordinary achievements before the age of 30. She didn’t win awards for her work as an actress. She had a fun level of fame for a while, but nothing that altered her daily routine, let alone the earth’s axis. When she died, there wasn’t even an obituary in the papers. But ain’t it the truth that you’re remembered the longest for the way you make people feel? For me and my sister, for all her family and her friends, she made us warmer, kinder, open to silliness and fans of burnt toast.

There’s a photograph I keep by the sink in the kitchen, of her holding us both. I think of her every day. More than I think of her perhaps than if she had stayed alive. And I choose to believe that in this way she is near to me. Appearing in dreams, in my mind when I talk to her. But most of all, in my mothering. When my son and I dissolve into giggles over something absolutely no one else understands, I know: she is here.

Lovely things this week

I do cry at just about anything, it’s true. But I thought this was adorable, floods enjoyably pouring down my face. The director’s cut video of the Coldplay song ‘All My Love,’ featuring Dick van Dyke, at 99 years old:

What’s the best Christmas movie? Please tell!

My favourites: The Muppet Christmas Carol (Disney+), Elf (Prime) and Spirited (Apple TV). On repeat.

Swoon…

Also in contention: It’s A Wonderful Life (so much darker than you think though). James Stewart is my crush of all time in The Philadelphia Story with Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant.