28 years without mum. The significance of the date, the number, the age, all etched into my psyche, seemingly forever.

What is it with my annual observation and analysis of a further 365 days without my mum?

Then I remember that humans are cyclic in nature. We have rhythms of body and nature. Seasons to plant, yield and rest. Watching the moon, the angles of the sun rays and surroundings helps us control the anticipation. We learn to expect certain things in order to keep a marginal order within.
We know that we can’t control the cycles of both life and death but our anticipation helps contain some of the chaos that we could get flung into.

Not having mum, all these years, left me with a loss certainly, but also a curiosity as to how she would be as an older woman. She was only 35 when we came to this country. Pregnant with her last child, mother to us 6 already, I forget that she was so young. Leaving Scotland and all her own siblings behind, made her the instant elder. All the British immigrants of the time became the elders. Mid thirties, and beyond, they held the new ‘colony’ in their own new wisdom and uncertainty. How young they were..

Would mum have embraced the new technology of today, I wonder? She could handle the Atari Space Invaders like a champ, and she also mastered her microwave. She whizzed over the electric typewriter keys at her work so I like to believe that she would figure out a smart phone. She would have loved to watch all the news on Facebook and I am sure she would have felt as much joy as I did, watching her son cycle the length of Great Britain. She would probably figure out how to use the video option to chat to her great grandsons and heap praise over their football awards. I wonder what radio station she would listen to and I’m sure she’d love all the Talent competitions on YouTube.

It’s nice to imagine still having her sage wisdom, but the wound of that fateful Thursday in 1991, still darkens out the lightness. Returning every year to mark off, yet another anniversary.

I miss you mum,
forever young.