My mother very thoughtlessly died when I was nineteen. I say thoughtlessly because I hadn't got to know her and have to rely on other people for my view of her. She was an unmarried mother and had to go out to work to support us so I was brought up largely by my grandmother, with whom we lived.
My memories of my mother are sketchy but according to those who knew her, she was wonderful, marvellous, such a good person. The only thing she did wrong was having me. (I don't mean that she shouldn't have done or that I wished she hadn't but simply that, in those days, having a child out of wedlock was frowned upon.)
It's very hard living with a memory of perfection. I assume she loved me. I'm told she did. 'She wanted you.' 'She loved you very much.' But I don't remember her touch. It's thirty-eight years since I last felt it; why should I? But shouldn't I? Shouldn't my lasting memory of my mother be of her love? I know she loved me. I'm told.
I don't remember sitting curled up with her having a bedtime story. But she worked. Her day was long and ... my memory is poor anyway.
I do recall the ultimate sin: showing off. Two occasions in a life of 18 years when my natural inhibitions slipped and the real me escaped long enough to make people laugh. 'Stop showing off!'
It's taken me - oh - so many years to find out that I'm allowed to, sometimes, 'show off'. That I can make people laugh and it's not wrong.
It's easy though, isn't it, to blame someone else, especially if that person is dead? Rather than looking inwards and ... I don't even know what I'm looking for. Reasons for a cocoon of bricks.
And did I love her? Of course I did: she was my mother. I cried when she died. She provided for me and did all the right things. She gave up life for me; her own aspirations had to be packed away after she'd had a child who had to be explained.
Yes, I loved her. She was wonderful.
But how dare she die so inconveniently?
Will anyone read this far? A babble of self-pity asking for sympathy. My finger is playing over the publish button. Do I really want to publish this? Is it enough that I've written it? Will the knot in my stomach release itself if I don't?
P.S. I should add that, as Kris says, I know my mother did the best she could do under the circumstances. She must have been hurting and damaged herself.