My mam, Eileen, died on 1st May 2015 aged seventy seven. I’ve not written about her since her death. I’ve always felt it to be a very personal thing and didn’t particularly look for sympathy in the way that an announcement on Facebook can engender. We are all different. However seeing as today is Mother’s Day it has made me think about her even though I can’t go and see her.
I guess most of us, though perhaps not all, are lucky enough to have fond memories and feelings about our mothers. It is only with hindsight that you begin to understand everything she did for you. It’s only after she died that I applied for an Irish passport. I wish I had done that whilst she was still with us. Doing so made me feel closer to her, able to identify more with her.
There is a lot of mam in me for which I am very grateful. It’s only after she died I realised how many friends she had. She would chat with the staff at the Shoprite supermarket in Peel and couldn’t walk down the street without seeing someone she knew. When I visited the florist to order the flowers for her coffin the lady in the shop was visibly upset when she found out who they were for. I think mam still holds the record for how long it takes to go shopping in Marks and Spencers in Douglas. It was at least three hours. She bumped into three friends at different times and went for a coffee with each of them in the M&S caff. Mam knew half the people on the Isle of Man as she worked in the blood clinic at Nobles Hospital. They all went through her hands at some time or another.
Her Irish playfulness was also used on my dad. She would occasionally ask him to pass the fork’n knife with a glint in her eye. There was nothing she wouldn’t do for us kids, including coming to pick me up from the pub in Crosby on dark nights when the mile and a half walk home, the second half in pitch darkness in winter, felt unattractive. I remember she would occasionally bash her Citroen 2CV on the gatepost coming home from work. I had to hammer the dent out and push the gatepost back into place. Mam would blame the scratch on “some bastard in the car park at work”. I suspect dad really knew the truth 🙂
She was a very generous soul and we knew, on visits home, if we went out for a trip to the shops with her there would always be something in it for us 🙂 Some of it came I’m sure as a reaction to her very poor background. She came from a place called Mohill in County Leitrim where her father worked at the local train station. The youngest of 7 children she was one of the few of them to stay in the parental cottage – a 2 room place called Tullybraddan with an acre of land out the back where they would keep a cow. 7 kids would not all fit in the “house” and the older ones were farmed out to relatives as another came along. Mam remembers driving a donkey (might have been a horse) and cart into town to deliver the milk.
I’m not going to give you her whole life story here. Just to tell you that mam was a wonderful woman and I am lucky enough to have been her son. I’m sure my sisters have the same sentiment. I am also lucky to be married to THG. I see a lot of similarities between her and mam. As the mother of 4 children today is also her day.
Hugs to all.