Happy Birthday, Mum

This Sunday, 30th June, would have been my mum’s 77th birthday.

Mum and Dad on their Silver Wedding Anniversary
It would have been their  Golden Anniversary this September.

To celebrate that day I’m releasing my sixth book ‘Inheritance’ with my first online book launch. Mum was the person who inspired my love of books by taking me to our local library when I was very young. We would go every three weeks and it was one of the highlights of my young life and gave me a passion that stayed with me my whole life.

Most people will tell you how wonderful their mother is; the positive effect that she had on their lives and the love they receive from her. I am no exception but it wasn’t just my brother, sister and I who thought she was amazing; no one had a bad word to say about her. My mum was a warm, giving, kind and understanding person who welcomed everyone into our home. There was always cake and biscuits in the cupboard, just in case someone might visit. She loved to banter with our friends, the cheekier they were the more she liked them.

She loved to laugh, sometimes to the point it was injurious to her health. One New Year, just after Calum was born, the family gathered at Mum and Dad’s house. We decided to mark the moment with a photograph of everyone using the timer function on the camera. The first couple of attempts didn’t go too well as I couldn’t get into position before the shutter clicked. Mum began to laugh and with every subsequent attempt she was laughing so hard that her eyes were closed and we had to try again. Her laugh was infectious and before long we were all giggling. Mum laughed so hard and so long it brought on an Asthma attack and we needed to give her inhalers in between the guffaws. We never did get the perfect picture.

As I mentioned she was a very friendly person, at least until her brood were threatened in any way, then she was a tiger. One Saturday, when I was seventeen, I had arranged to meet her to help her with the shopping. I was sitting outside the shop when two men approached me. They were police officers and I was taken across the street to the local station. They proceeded to question me about a mugging that had taken place the previous afternoon as I was wearing a similar jacket to the suspect. I knew I had done nothing wrong and as I had been sitting in school at the time of the crime with the Deputy Head Teacher, the Principal Guidance Teacher and the Head of Drama, I knew I had a pretty strong alibi. The cops soon realised that they had made a mistake and I was set free without an apology. By this time I was late for my meeting with Mum and she was worried. (These were the ancient days before mobile phones.) When she discovered what had happened, it was all I could do to stop her crossing the road and giving every police officer in that station a piece of her mind. She was so angry that she might have ended up in jail herself.

A speeding driver killed mum outside her house on 11th November 1995 when she was just 59 years old. It happened eleven months after the birth of her first grandchild Calum and six weeks after the birth of my niece Morven. She didn’t ever see my daughter Kirsten or my two other nieces Isla and Emma. The hardest thing to accept about her death is that the kids didn’t get a chance to know a grannie who would have doted on each of them, probably taking their side in every debate with their parents and spoiling them rotten.

After she was killed, we had five years of legal wrangling that meant it was difficult to put her death from our minds and celebrate her life.

But this Sunday I will celebrate that wonderful life of love, kindness and warmth. I will remember her laugh, her support and encouragement. Happy Birthday, Mum. x