Can it really be that nine years have gone by? On this grey, overcast but fairly mild day mum would have turned 89. Time speeds up as we get older. I well recall her final birthday. We all went out for dinner, we were all terrified by dad's driving, and we all had a good time. I was slimmer, less grey, had more hair and was living in another flat. I ate T bone steak, indulged and lived on for a couple more months with her about. She died two months later, suddenly, unexpectedly but ultimately at the right time.
The last years of her life were wracked with joint pain, depression, chronic anxiety and dementia. I do not want to think about what might have happened had she not gone swimming in the sea that day, had not had a heart attack and would not have drowned. Life in a care home would have been awful for her. And that was what would have happened sooner or later.
That my relationship with her was troubled is well documented. She was troubled, combative and hostile at times. But on her birthday I prefer to remember how she was volunteering at St Peter's School in Folkestone teaching the kids to read and generally amazing people with her stories.
A great regret for me is that at the end of her life she felt she had achieved nothing. The two great passions of her life were her Christian faith and her fierce and determined fight to raise the rights of women. Even today the Anglo Catholic church is not as accepting of women as a Christian church should be. A lack of tolerance plagued the church of England for many years.
Coming to the university as I did in 2007 I learned so much about the fight for equality. Yes I knew my world, the world of mental illness. But not of the other strands of the agenda.
My world has evolved over the thirty years I have battled for my cause. We're not there yet but we are getting to a better place. The writings I put on here do I hope help. Likewise my occasional social media posts on mental health.
Mum would rarely accept that she was wrong. She wouldn't accept early in my life how troubled she was by her mental health. When I had my breakdown she told me she knew she didn't really. She knew her experience not mine. But who can fault her for that?
I have tried hard in the last thirty years to acknowledge where my peers are. Sometimes I succeed, sometimes I fail. People have said to me over the years "remember she is ill too". Too late in her life did I recognise that.
On the 28th March we will once again mark her passing. I will listen to requiems, Miriam will reflect, and dad I suspect will risk the bus to visit her memorial at the crematorium. But that can wait. For today would have been her birthday. Happy birthday mum.
I Heard a Voice.
