Gone

There I was at work - gone 6pm - examining data, preparing for a difficult meeting about exam results. I ended up deciding to attach the document I was working on to an email that I could catch up on later. That was when I spotted another email from my daughter marked "URGENT". "Dad phone home NOW. Grandma is seriously ill and they want you to go over." It was timed at17.23. I phoned home but it was too late. My mother was already dead.

She was born on May 24th 1921. She grew up in dire poverty, abandoned by her parents and spent her formative years with her grandparents - even taking their surname - White instead of her registered surname - Jackson. The war came and she signed up, joining the WAAF (Women's Airforce). She was posted to India where she met my father who she married just after the war in Delhi in 1945.

They came home to England where she had four sons and became the wife of a village headmaster. All her life she was an expert craftswoman making lampshades and gloves, baskets and eiderdowns. She even taught "mixed crafts" and I remember so many nights when she was up late beavering away beneath a lamp.

Her name was Doreen. Tomorrow I must drive over to Beverley and arrange her funeral. Pick up the death certificate etc.. She was a woman who lived a full life. In her seventies she travelled back to India after a Round-the-World trip that took her to Vancouver and Sydney, Auckland and Singapore. She's gone and of course I will never forget her. I loved her. I am so pleased that the kids - Ian and Frances came over to see her with Shirley and I (like that Demob Happy?) a week last Sunday. She was eighty six years old and she was a very special lady - far far more special than Diana Spencer of whom Prince Harry said "She was the best mum in the world". He was so wrong.