Thanks For Everything

I’d like to thank you for not giving up after the twins, and for the months of discomfort while carrying me, the pain when bearing me.

I’d like to thank you for your early care, even though later I’d discover that you’d sometimes actually been rather negligent – almost fatally so: there was that time you dropped me going down the stairs and I bounced, ending up at the bottom in a pool of blood; then you let me wander off while you were cleaning and I ended up on the main road, seen by a passing lorry-driver and taken to the police station; or that picnic, when you left me by the wheel of our car and another car rolled down the hill, slamming into ours and shunting it several yards. But then I’d like to thank you for picking me up just before the collision,

I’d like to thank you for the first aid after those other accidents – the washing of my knee and comforting after I came off the soap-cart (Pete had leaned to go right, I’d leaned to go left), and the kind words and plaster when the stone flew out of the lawn-mower, hitting me on the chin. I have the scars to remember. And I’d like to thank you for your care on those fevered nights and days of childhood illness.

I’d like you thank you for the sacrifices you and dad must have had to make to put my brother and me through university, though I hope that you will have felt compensated with some degree of pride in our achievements.

I’d like to thank you for our home and the way it felt: the comfort, the warm décor, the dusty ornaments that might have seemed like clutter to some, but which came from your tastes, your choices, your heart, and were just right. The small house was like the welcoming feel of that favourite pair of carpet slippers you slip on after a hard day’s work.

I’d like to thank you for the selfless interest in other people that you always showed, whether they were strangers – the people you engaged with at bus-stops might have thought you over-inquisitive, but I knew it wasn’t the case – or closer. You were always keen to know about my life, long after I’d flown the coop. And there was your invariably good advice, too, when asked for, coming from experience that had been well-learned from a life well-lived.

I’d like to thank you for your good humour – despite circumstances to the contrary, life is good seemed to be the underlying message – and good sense of humour. (Those groan-inducing jokes that you’d rattle off whenever the family got together; the plastic lips from a Christmas cracker, worn with dead-pan seriousness; the malapropisms that my brother and I suspected might not always be entirely accidental; similarly, your famous difficulty with the word aspidistra, played for laughs.)

I’d like to thank you for your generosity. With money, yes – although you were of slender means, you’d always offer to pay for the teas or coffees, or dinner when we went out. (You’d have your purse in your hand before we even entered a place; I’ll pay, you’d say. If it was a restaurant, or a café abroad, we’d remind you that you didn’t have to pay until afterwards.) With other things, too – my friends leaving after a visit loaded down with tins of carrots, packs of spaghetti, tea bags … you were very insistent and persuasive. And you always had time, or made it, for people who needed a hand, a chat.

I’d like to thank you for teaching us good manners and sound morality. Mind your ‘p’s and ‘q’s was a simple motto that we carried with us from an early age. In supermarkets, I'll replace an item that's fallen from the shelf, remembering you as I do; it wasn’t your job, and other people would walk past it, though not you. I found a wallet a couple of years back and took it to the local police station. It had €150 in it, but I didn’t think twice about delivering the whole amount, and that wasn’t something I’d learned at school.

I’d like to thank you for your cooking, much of which I copy today: the omelettes with cheese and mushrooms; the special recipe Bolognese sauce with tarragon; the industrial production line of pancakes on Shrove Tuesday, with lashings of lemon juice and crunchy sugar; the Sunday lunches of beef, pork or lamb, with roast spuds, two veg, Yorkshire puddings and gravy made with the meat juices, prepared throughout the morning and served up as dad and I rolled in from the pub (he would have helped with the peeling and cutting of the veg before going out); the enormous logistical operation that was Christmas dinner – turkey and stuffing, pork, multiple veg, tiny roast sausages, gravy from the turkey giblets; your fruit pies – apple, apple and blackberry, apple and raspberry; the perfect, unrequested cups of tea in the morning and biscuits for dunking, placed on the bedside table with a gentle word and a slight shake of my shoulder.

I’d like to thank you for your love of animals, and especially cats. You had four over the years: Emma, Zoe, Sadie, Toots. Perhaps they were a substitute for the daughters you never had? You certainly treated them like it. I remember how you spent several cold, wet, wintry nights enticing Sadie from underneath a wrecked car at the local garage, in order to give her a warm, safe home. You despised cruelty to any creature. And when we went to a terrace bar for a coffee and a cake, half the cake would go to sparrows and pigeons that seemed attracted by your kindness. I’ve had four of my own cats over the years, spoilt with the same unconditional love that you bestowed on yours. Birds, too, enjoy titbits from me, thinking of you.

I’d like to thank you (but only for the goodness of heart that it implied) for your self-effacement; in those later years, when your body was groaning with the aches and pains of old age, you never did. Because that would have meant, in your mind, troubling others. It wouldn’t have been any trouble (it would have been the least we could do, after all) to help you, to care for you, but we had to guess those moments.

I’d like to thank you – to properly thank you – for all these things and more, but of course, it’s too late now, to my eternal regret.

I can only hope that at the time, my appreciation was evident enough. I pray that it was.