I always loved my Mum but there were times in my life when I didn`t like her. Don`t get me wrong, I would have walked over hot coals for her and she for me and to this day I miss her and was devastated when she died in 1987.
As I`ve grown older and raised 3 sons of my own then I can look back and understand why sometimes she was the way she was. She was frequently impatient, bad tempered and I can`t remember many hugs or cuddles from her and she`d think nothing of giving us a clip around the earhole for the most minor thing.
As a child I couldn`t appreciate just how much she coped with and how hard it must have been and looking back I see my late sister had it much tougher than I did. Mum had my older brother and sister with a 3 year gap between them and then 7 years later she fell pregnant with me. I was totally unplanned but back in 50`s family planning was easier said than done and a bigger shock was yet to come.
I was just 9 months old when Mum discovered she was pregnant again and after an awful pregnancy my younger brother was born. A sickly child who right from word go, ailed everything under the Sun and who needed several surgeries for various health issues.
We didn`t have a car, there were no mod cons such as automatic washers, fridge freezers, online supermarket food shops, microwaves and so on. Everything was physical hard slog and time consuming and my Dad worked from 6am to 6pm but with 4 kids and a house to pay for and upkeep, money was always tight.
I was still only a baby when my brother was born, I was just 18 months old and my Mum always said many years later that she had to put me down to pick him up because he was such a sick child and she`d always felt guilty about that. Hospitals were very strict, she couldn`t take me with her, none of Mum`s sisters lived nearby so couldn`t help out so my sister, as young as she was, got the job of caring for me, she`d only be 8 or 9 herself.
Even around looking after us, cooking and cleaning, visiting my brother in hospital etc Mum worked 2 cleaning jobs, one at 5am before Dad left for work and one at 5pm when my sis was home from school and could care for me and start prepping the tea.
My sister was my second Mum and she taught me to read before I started school and took me everywhere with her. When I began school my sister was at secondary school and even with homework and having to travel there, she was still spending much of her teenage years minding me and helping out with everything else.
By the time sis married I was 14, my older brother was also married and Mum and Dad were in a better financial position, Mum was working full time plus my younger brother`s health was much better but around that time my Mum was diagnosed with a serious heart condition and for the next few years her health quickly deteriorated. We`d become close by then and we`d spent time together, me as a teen and her as a much mellowed less stressed parent.
I left school at 16 and by then Mum was unable to work and my wages helped out. When i married and had my older 2 sons by then I was in my 20`s, she was never able to run around after toddlers or get down on the floor and play with them or lift and carry them. Her heart was failing fast and even minor exertion made her turn blue in the face. It was my turn then to look after 2 boisterous boys, both under school age, take care of my house and to help look after Mum and do the jobs she could no longer manage. She tried to be fiercely independent and still did all her own cooking, washing and ironing but other jobs were beyond her. Life had gone full circle and it made me realise how tough things had been for her and why she was so often impatient and bad tempered. She`d been knackered, worn out, stressed, not enough hours in a day and worrying if one of her children would live or die.
I was 33 when she died and had just had my third unplanned but greatly loved son a few months earlier and he never knew his Gran. My older sister , my second Mum did as she always did and held us all together and organised everything. My Dad was floundering and didn`t have a clue how to properly look after himself, Mum had always done it for him.
I`ve tried my best to be a good parent but I firmly believe there is no such thing as a perfect parent, it`s a learning curve, we make mistakes, we learn from them and sometimes life throws us a curve ball which makes us do or say things we wouldn`t normally have done. I think it`s often the same for our children, especially when they become adults. I was widowed at 49 and my youngest son was still a teenager, had lived seeing his Dad deteriorate and die a dreadful death with cancer and had seen me try to work a full time job, keep my house ticking over and pay my bills whilst trying to care for a dying man. Maybe I should have had more time for my son or more understanding of how he was feeling or how he was coping but I was swimming against the tide, frantically trying to keep afloat and there were many days when I felt I was failing with everything.
After his Dad died my relationship with my youngest son hit a rocky patch, he was just 17, he became argumentative, difficult to talk to and frequently he was very hurtful in the things he said. He was grieving, as was I and we were the blind leading the blind and not knowing which direction either of us were going in. Thankfully we worked through it and I think back to a friend of mine who was terminally ill and who wrote her own eulogy before she died.
In it she said " if I have ever hurt any of you here today then I am sorry and I hope you will forgive me and if any of you here today have ever hurt me then rest assured I know that today you will be sorry about it and I want you to know I forgive you too so we can all be cool can`t we and just get on with what needs to be done ". I`d say very similar when my turn comes.