Val’s Story

Dear Mum,

Its 45 years since we last spent Mothers Day together.

After you died I found Mothers Day really hard, not Christmas, or even your birthday but Mothers Day. This is the day where I feel your absence most painfully. I know others are able to call someone else mum, whether it’s a friend’s mother, or maybe a mother in law, but that is something that I just couldn’t ever bring myself to do. There can and will only ever be, one of you.

I really miss being able to say such simple phrases like, ‘Hi mum’, ‘see you tomorrow mum’ or ‘let me ask mum.’ I may be 67 years old but in so many ways I feel like I’m still 22 and waiting for you and dad to pop over for Julie’s first birthday party. I remember the last day I saw you. There was nothing particularly special about it; nothing that could have prepared me for the devastating news that came that afternoon. You were gone, only 42 years young.

How you loved the girls. You only got to meet two of them but I know you would have loved them all with that same one-eyed devotion. Can you believe it? I have five daughters, each of them so unique and special yet they all remind me of you in some way too. One of them has your cheeky sense of mischief and fun, another your practical wisdom and they all share your dogged determination and amazing capacity to cope with tough stuff. You would be so proud of them all.

I know that you would have beamed with pure joy as you watched them grow into such magnificent women. How I longed to share each moment of their lives with you, and for them to know that there was another woman who loved them with the same fierce and unwavering devotion that I do. I know that’s the sort of grandmother you would have been to them because that’s the mother that you were to me.

Happy Mothers Day, Mum. I love you, I miss you and I always will.