Like many people on 11th November, I will be remembering a loved one. My mum passed away five years ago today. After a sudden, painful illness, she died at the age of fifty three. Her death was the worst thing I've ever had to deal with and it ultimately changed my life.
Our relationship had the usual ups and downs but we were extremely close. She was the strongest woman I ever had the privilege to know, raising three daughters alone after my father walked out.
I spent my teenage years arguing with her when she took my Dad back and I moved out at nineteen. But we grew close again after I left home and started a family of my own. When I was crippled with arthritis and barely able to move, she cooked and cleaned. And when my boys came along with health problems of their own, she was there every step of the way.
We became more like best friends as the years went on, shopping and gossiping together. People rarely saw one of us without the other.
Towards the end of her life, things did become strained. In some ways she seemed jealous of the great relationship I had with my husband, when she and my father were more volatile than ever. At times I found her presence in our lives too intrusive and started to back away. Now, I can't ever get that time back with her.
When she took ill our whole family fell apart. She was the lynch pin for all of us, keeping us together through thick and thin. We don't have the same closeness we once had, and my father moved on before her body was even cold. Christmas and birthdays never seem the same without her organising everything, and the grandchildren she helped to raise hardly remember her.
I spent nearly every day with her and I was lost when she left us. I'm not ashamed to say I was a basket case. I didn't see the point in going anywhere or doing anything when she wasn't with me. After a while when the pain did begin to subside, I realised I needed to live my life.
Although I'd always enjoyed writing, I had never done it seriously. So, with a need to find something just for me, I entered a competition. Now, the story was rubbish but after that I joined my online crit group, UCW. Not only did we read each other's work, but we supported each other and became good friends. They turned my life around.
After becoming a bit of a recluse, I finally had people to talk to. They gave me confidence to sub my work, and confidence in myself. If I wanted this career as a writer, I had to work for it. And these past years I've tried my damnedest. I may never make my millions but I'm doing what I love.
I'm not sure what she would make of the genre I write, but I'd like to think she was proud of me.
I will miss her every day for the rest of my life.
