My mum sadly passed away following a stay in hospital linked to vascular dementia.
The funeral service we selected rather let us down and could not offer an all-in-one service, so we have had to arrange a burial and a separate memorial instead. Mum’s church have kindly agreed to facilitate that as part of their Sunday service.
Mum grew up in the 1940s, an only child to older parents, and spent most of her early life in NW Londond. She met Dad at Church and continued to live in NW Londond after they got married. I was born while they lived there. We came to Watford in Hertfordshire in 1974 after my brother was born.
I think I would be right in saying that my mum was happiest here in Watford. We moved away to London again in the mid-80s, but mum and dad came back to Watford to ‘retire’ in the early 2000s.
Mum used to like to remind us that her first job was at Scotland Yard for the Police, as a typist I think. She had various part-time and lunch-time jobs as we were growing up, but her main life’s work was mum and housewife.
I remember mum taking us walking through the Bluebell woods, and along the local countryside walk, picking up cuttings for her rockeries and going to visit the horses that used to graze there. She was a keen gardener, enjoyed painting and arts and crafts.
She loved pretty things, hats and scarfs and beads and sequins. She loved animals especially cats, and she was very attached to her little cat Suzie.
She didn’t have the easiest life – she had health issues for all her adult life, and she really struggled after dad was gone, but she was blessed to have a team of lovely, kind ladies to help her: Sandra, Amy, Louise, Imogen and Rachel, and of course my brother who lived close by and bore most of the burden of organising everything for her. Mum did try briefly to live with me in Cornwall, but she couldn’t adjust and missed Watford and returned again in 2017.
I think mum made friends at her Church in Watford, so I was glad to have the opportunity to say goodbye to her there, where her friends are.
City Borg on the Prairie 