Hello everyone,
I know that you are here to say your own goodbyes to mum but I know that you are also here to support those of us who were closest to mum and I really appreciate this.
It has felt like getting this far to the funeral has been a marathon, a long wait, and as you can imagine and have likely experienced yourselves, every night of these last few weeks I have been wondering what to say that would be a fitting tribute and goodbye to mum. I didn’t manage to come up with anything close to a fitting tribute or find the words to say goodbye, after all words are not my strong point – that is more Muriel, Marion and Cicely’s department – I work better with pictures.
Organisation, forward planning, logic, logistics – these are qualities I can only assume I inherited from my dad.
Remembering my handbag and my door key; these are things that I taught myself, learnt through a childhood of climbing in the kitchen window.
But the big important things in life are the things that she taught me, that I am forever grateful for and if I have managed to pass them on to my children, then I will have honoured her;
Humour and fun; I feel that these are much underrated qualities in our society, often seen to be trivial or of lesser importance to more serious endeavors like ‘success’ ‘intellect’ but mum was the source of such fun and joy, as all of your shared stories can testify, not in a flippant or hedonistic way but with the desire to make those around her happy. She taught me that we are responsible for our own happiness.
Love of adventure – it goes without saying – all of you here have heard of her legendary adventures and most of you have been part of them. Her love of travel was part of her Intellectual curiosity, her desire to find out and try to understand how other people and places did things
Gratitude; like most children, my childish jealousies were always based on what I didn’t have; we didn’t have a fitted kitchen, I didn’t get to go to Butlins or Disneyland but somehow, she managed to steer me away from those petty things and teach me that having each other, a loving family, a good brain and a good education, these things are not only enough but more than many people have in an entire lifetime.
When things were tough, she could always find the smallest thing to be grateful for….and then would change the subject and ask you what you had for dinner.
In spite of our loss, it really is in her spirit that we must feel grateful that she didn’t have to suffer further and we feel grateful for every moment we had her in our lives.
These last things that I have learned from her but not yet mastered;
Generosity, duty & Moral obligation; she didn’t need a self help book, or a religion or a philosophy, a ‘learner profile’ to tell her to do service, she simply believed that it was a moral obligation to give; if you have more things, more money, more time, more education it a human duty to share with those who have less. This is how she lived.
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