Roots

On our way home from the Lake District we took a long detour to visit the cemetery in Nottinghamshire where my mum is buried.  I realize that she is not really there; it's just a stone memorial over long-dead remains, but its a place I've been drawn to many times over the years.  A focal point to remember, to sense the loss and often to cry.

Mum's grave.  I can't recall ever seeing flowers here,
but the green chippings have kept their colour well
over the past 57 years.

On April 19th 1957 we set off from Cornwall in our new car; mum at the wheel, dad in the front passenger seat with me between his knees and my new-born brother in his carrycot on the back seat.  No seat belts or safety worries in those days!

Perhaps it was too soon after the birth for mum to be driving a long distance in an unfamiliar car.  Perhaps it was her habit of driving with just two thumbs wrapped over the base of the steering wheel.  I shall never know. But 65 miles into the journey mum lost control of the car, which swerved, hit a bank, rolled over and came to rest on its wheels.  Mum was thrown out. The rest of us, remarkably, emerged unscathed.

The last time I saw my mum, she was being wheeled out of Okehampton hospital on a trolley, festooned with tubes and gauges.  Her skull was broken.  She died a little later that day.

44 years have past since I stood at that grave, on the way home from a honeymoon in North Wales.  I'm told that mum was a very strong-willed lady.  Incurring the family's displeasure, she had broken off an engagement to marry my dad, so I've always felt that she would have approved of my choice. My spouse's upbringing was very different to mine, and some definitely judged that I had married 'beneath myself', but I've obviously inherited my mum's determination to plough my own furrow and not live to others' agendas.