What to say about Mum, who was born 100 years ago today, in a nursing home in Dudley Road, Wallasey? As I observed in an earlier post, so much of her world has changed. Locally, what is left? All of the houses that she lived in, the river promenade, and Vale Park. Gone are the Hotel Victoria, scene of her wedding reception, and the little tin church in which she was married. And the schools that she went to, redeveloped from the 1970s. But Marine Park, in which she played after school, is still there. Enough remains to gain an impression of the world that she knew, and imagination can do the rest. Not that the stage set means much once the main player has left for good.
Of Mum’s social world – something that meant much to her after she married and started to develop confidence – some has now gone. Ladies Circle has almost disappeared nationally, while the local Masonic Widows was disbanded as she went to her final residence in 2014. Almost all of her colleagues in these organisations must have gone by now. Of others, the R C church of English Martyrs, at which she was still reading the lesson late in life, is still operating, now called Apostles and Martyrs. And Inner Wheel, nationally and locally, is still very much in being. She would be very pleased about that. It was founded just over a year before her birth.
Well, all this could have gone, but it’s the person that we have lost, that truly matters. Her siblings pre-deceased her, and sadly one of her daughters. She had four grandchildren, who remember her fondly – perhaps experiencing her differently from her son and daughters. Unfortunately, her three great grandchildren cannot have memories of her, but maybe the stories about her will keep her in their imaginations as they grow up. If that seems unlikely, I grew up with three grandparents but one missing – my grandfather John, who died before I was born. Mum’s oft-told stories about him has kept him alive in my imagination.
I can only answer for my own experience of Mum, and the deep love for her, despite our many differences, that is permanent and stable. I took some – not all – of my values from her, and, from my childhood, she is the leading person in my memories. It was good, later in life, to reverse the roles, so that I took her to places for days out and short holidays. I think that she appreciated these, and I will treasure those memories. In later years, she and I became one another’s confidantes, especially after my first wife died in 2002. (Having lost my second wife, too, one of many regrets is that I can’t talk to Mum about this massive loss).
A predominant memory is my calling in, after a short walk through the suburbs in which we both lived, to talk to her. She would be in the front lounge watching television. I would rap on the window, she would turn off the TV, greet me at the door, and we would talk, in the lounge or kitchen, about our respective circumstances. This private memory, mundane and no doubt resonant with many others, is a predominant one. I wonder, if she was still alive and could cast her memory back, what she would be thinking, what she would now recall, and what would be uppermost in her memory? We shall never know.
Joan Boughey Recalled 