Something Lasting

It's a year to the day since Mum died. I think of her often, and usually in conjunction with thoughts about Dad. This might sound a touch morbid, but it doesn't feel remotely so as there's hardly any sense of sadness attached to these memories. The only thing that evokes any sense of regret at all is my growing awareness of just how young Dad was when he died and the fact that they were parted from each other so early.

The last time we saw Mum in her flat, the year we visited with Fifi and Fafa in tow, there was a curious little incident with Mum, if you can call it an incident, that shed light upon just how much she missed Dad. I happened to be alone with her in the little living room when her attention seemed to be caught by something over by the window. I realised that she was looking intently at the rather faded picture of Dad on there, the only one we had of him. It was an enlargement of a shot of Dad amiably grinning, not a terribly good one, from a wedding picture of my sister - her first marriage. Mum had it done when he died so it had always been around. She was unusually excited, happy almost, oddly radiant - like a young girl - and she said to me, He was a lovely fellah, wasn't he? It was as if she sought for corroboration of an important fact, to make sure she wasn't going doolally. (She was acutely, frighteningly aware that she was losing her mental faculties at that time.) It was easy to reassure her that, He was, because he was, and for a moment we stood out of time.

I hope in the last difficult years she had more of those moments than we knew. I suspect she did.