I have blogged about my mother many times; I always confessed to her afterwards and she always seemed chuffed to hear that she had been my muse. Mum never asked to read the published content – preferring paper I guess – but occasionally would say, ‘no doubt you can use this story in a future blog,’ or ‘I hope you are taking notes’. So trusting.

Sadly, mum would not be able to read this blog , even if she wanted to, for she slipped away from us last week – on her terms, naturally. For once I am lost for words.

Irreverent though I am, with mum I have little need to adapt her truth to write a good story, for our Lazarus of a mother (she threatened to change postcode so many times over the years, only to bounce back with new energy and new stories) was vibrant enough to need no embellishment. I have few words to do justice to her 98+ years, but I can write some thank you notes for the legacy she leaves us with.

In no particular order I thank mum for:

• Her energy and her relentless goal-setting. Few nonagenarians insist on taking part in Zoom pilates or set themselves a target of pushing their walking frame on a circuit around the village green each day; ‘our’s’ did. Mum was still swimming at the crack of sparrow until recently and I kept the concept of wild water swimming from her because I knew she would want to expand her water repertoire if she heard that it was now ‘a thing’. It was hard to be a couch potato with a role model such as she. Mum put her energy down to being brought up on a farm, playing cricket with her siblings and walking everywhere in the fresh air – sometimes even herding sheep to market before her school day began. Well ahead of the wellbeing curve, our mother was truly grounded and had little truck for anyone who in her opinion had, ‘let themselves go’ or God forbid, developed ‘bingo wings’.
• Her love of clothes and her love of colour. Although mum was an accomplished seamstress, she loved nothing better than a clothes shopping trip and the brighter the colour of the garment, the happier she was . Once she had committed to having her ‘colours done’ there was no stopping her love of retail therapy; her ‘warm spring’ of a colour palette was responsible for the purchase of a bright purple tracksuit to look the part at her yoga class and some alarming red platform shoes (actually these were purchased well before ColourMeBeautiful endorsed her rainbow, these were a statement purchase made – much to our father’s embarrassment – to counteract a concern that her daughters were starting to look down on her on account of adolescent growth spurt).
• Her curiosity. Mum was just plain interested in people and their stories and if she received an invite she would take it. She always insisted that she was shy, but her social diary indicated otherwise. Sometimes I would call on mum and feel a little jealous of the number of ‘pop ins’ she would receive during my visit, visitors of all ages who mum may have met through the church, lunch club, day centre, the walking group, flower arranging, sign language course et al. ‘We would love a coffee, wouldn’t we?’ she’d say to her visitors as she held court, ‘My daughter will sort it’ – see below.
• Her love of caffeine – and ‘only the good stuff’. Mum astounded medical opinion by taking all her fluid in the form of Nespresso black coffee, burning out many a coffee machine in the process, leaving any glass of water untouched and taking a flask of coffee to bed with her each night. If mum could combine a retail expedition with ‘a cheeky coffee’ she was in Nirvana. Although mum liked the concept of afternoon tea, she preferred her scone to be accompanied with a stronger caffeinated brew, and this often led to some harsh post-event critique of any tea time invite she may have accepted (see above).
• Her faith. Mum’s answer to life’s troubles was to address them with prayer and to harness her lifelong Methodist faith. During Covid times, she joined a Zoom prophesy course run by local churches and, although sorely disappointed to discover (in her own opinion) that she did not have a prophetic gifting, she was described quite aptly by the course leader as being a ‘Prayer Warrior’. Sadly, mum heard this through Zoom prism and hearing aid, as ‘Prayer Worrier’ and spent many weeks agitating that her prophesy pals must find her to be a very needy over- thinker: ‘I didn’t see that coming,’ mum laughed after the misunderstanding was unravelled.
• Her sense of humour. Mum had an unintended flair for malaprop – often declaring she was ‘ravishing’ rather than ‘ravenous’ for example and a great ability to laugh at herself, often with an insatiable and infectious giggle. Mum thought it hilarious to see grandchildren and great grandchildren ‘pimping’ her stair lift and often reminded us of the story when she pulled a large pair of dad’s underpants from her coat pocket during a church service, believing she was about to blow her nose on a discrete pocket handkerchief. ‘That will teach me not to be late for church and not to pull the first thing that comes to hand from the airing cupboard,’ she chuckled. ‘The minister should be credited for not breaking his stride when I brandished your father’s greying undergarment as he moved to give me a blessing; the Reverend continued with communion quite nicely, sadly your father proved to be less forgiving.’
• Her love of words. Mum would have you believe that she was not academic and would share this view while rattling through the Daily Telegraph cryptic crossword or producing a triple word score on the Scrabble board – sadly talents not bequeathed in my direction. In times of trouble, mum would send the most beautiful and insightful emails. In contrast, armed with a basic mobile phone, mum texted us frequently (often in the middle of the night) in block capitals and no punctuation. This could be alarming but my mother was not afraid of offering her direct opinion invited or not; her insights were always timely and annoyingly accurate.
• Her sense of competition. Mum loved playing any game and would take no prisoners. After a recent gathering of her grandchildren, sadly no-one could produce a photo of mum looking directly at the camera because there was no way we could persuade her to leave a game of Connect Four or Bagatelle unfinished just to pose for a photo.
• Her biscuit recipe. Until recently it would be rare to leave our mother’s house without a bag of ‘Marion’s biscuits’. We kick ourselves now for not taking her artisan produce to Dragon’s Den, but this would have meant sharing the recipe and we only know it as a ‘cup of this, and a cup of that’. This being said, mum must have once shared the recipe with my son, because he managed to finance his Year 9 trip to Morocco by selling bags of ‘Marion’s Biscuits’ to his friends at school. Fortunately he was able to wrap up his business before the school tuck shop got wind of this clandestine enterprise. Mum was delighted in this early form of crowd-funding; the headmaster apparently less so.
  Admittedly the biscuits never came out of the oven in the same way which would have made them difficult to market to a wider demographic. Sometimes they were soft, sometimes brittle – sometimes a little burnt – but then my love of figurative language finds this a fitting metaphor for our mother. Mum always handed the biscuits to us in a little bag complete with a sugar cube to keep them fresh; it was her way of telling you that you were special and that she was glad that you had visited. I can already sense some panic in the family that one of us is going to have to take over mum’s baking legacy; morally, I feel we just need to look in my son’s direction.

After saying goodbye to mum over so many years, it comes as a shock to discover that Lazarus is no longer here to share our news. Even in her frailer days, mum would lie like the Queen of Sheba and direct life from the luxury of her sofa – a sofa which she refused to have adapted by her care team to make life easier. Mum remained adamant that she would not leave us from a care home or hospital so we thought it strange that on the day before she left us mum finally agreed to have a hospital bed delivered to the house – this agreement coming from the woman who hid her Zimmer frame and walking sticks from public view telling us that they ‘are ugly and just get in the way’. We like to think that mum ‘beat the bed’ and went from her own four walls very much on her own terms. Mum was just humouring us, letting us think that we were taking care of her, when she already had her own transition plans in place.

I am sure our mother could tell a good story about her move to a new postcode. I hope she finds some way of getting this story to us, for presently I have no words and find myself struggling to use the past tense. Maybe she will text us later.