I am in so much pain today that I don't know what to do with myself! I have things to do, but no energy to do it! I want to wrap myself up and not speak to anyone, not do anything, and just wallow in misery! But, my mum would have told me what she always told me 'pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again' and she would also have said 'stop feeling sorry for yourself, there are people in the world worse off than you'! My mum, bless her, was my rock, I loved her with all my heart, she always knew the right things to say and do to pick me back up, and the four years since she died have been the hardest of my life! When she died, I fell apart, and although I have a brilliant hubby and two incredible sons, I miss her! I still to this day have not gone through all the paperwork from her house, I cannot bring myself to do it yet, because I know I will fall apart again. There is such a void in my life, and I think that will never be filled. My mum was the best, and I will always miss her.
This month would have been her 86th birthday, she was born on 24th May 1926, in Scotland, the eldest of eight children, and she was a very intelligent woman. At the age of 11 she won a Scholarship to go to Bathgate School, which was the equivalent of a Grammar School today. Unfortunately her parents couldn't let her go because she was needed at home to help with the other children and to go to the school she would have had to spend 4 hours a day travelling. She had 3 sisters and 4 brothers. She went into the army at the age of 18, which was in 1944, and she became one of very few women who became a Sargeant and she used to be one of the people who shot down enemy airplanes during the second World War! She was always a brave woman! In 1947, when the war was over and she turned 21, she married a man called Fred Lapworth, and she was with him for just 18 months. They lived in a mobile home near to Fred's mother (who still ruled him!), and he treated my mum very badly! The final straw came one day when he beat her and she got up and walked out that same day! She was in England, knew nobody, and had to get a job and somewhere to live. She became a bus conductress and lived in a B & B. During the time that all this was happening to my mum, my dad was having problems too. His wife of 5 years had left him, taking with her their baby daughter of 3 months, but leaving behind two daughters who were at that time 4 years and 18 months. My dad had to turn to his family to help him, and as he was one of 12 he had plenty of people to call on! He was a bus driver at the time.
My lovely mum, in one of her fun moments!
As I am sure you have guessed by now, my mum and dad met 'On the Buses' (great title for a TV programme!!!) and as the saying goes the rest is history!! They met in early 1949 and my mum moved in with dad! They were, in fact, 'living in sin'!! By July of 1950 my sister Liz was born, closely followed by my brother Brian in September 1951! My mum also took on the two girls left behind, Margaret (born in 1944) and Pam (born in 1947). They had a houseful, but my mum was happy to just be cared for and loved, something she had seen little of throughout her life. Their difficulties didn't end there though, Margaret and Pam's mother returned in 1950, not long before Liz was born, and told dad that she didn't want the baby anymore. My dad, and my mum, without a second thought, took the baby from her, only to find out just a couple of days later, that she was ill. She was rushed to hospital and sadly died. The cause was neglect!! My mum and dad, although they told the authorities what had happened, were then put under scrutiny and were in danger of losing all of the children. The bitch that was my two half sister's mother, then contacted social services and tried to get the two girls off my dad! She was an evil woman! Thankfully family, friends and neighbours rallied round my mum and dad and told the authorities exactly what had been going on, and after a difficult few months, they were cleared of any wrong doing and were given full custody of the two older girls, and were left in peace! By this time Liz had been born and mum found out she was expecting my brother Brian. Over the next 5 years mum had three miscarriages, and then in 1957 I was born. I was to be the last child they had. During all this time my parents were not married, and in fact my dad was not divorced from his first wife, mainly because they did not have the money to pay for it! During all this, my dad actually found out that the baby his first wife took with her was not his, but the lodger's that she had run off with, and that she had left him in approximately £3,000 of debt, which back then was a lot of money! He had been handing over his pay every week and she had been living the high life with the lodger and not paying the bills! As I have already said, she was an evil woman. So basically, my mum took on a man with two children, bad debts, and then lived in sin with him and had three illegitimate children! Today that would be the norm, back then we were sometimes shunned and it was frowned upon!
Me with my lovely mum in the garden enjoying the sun and a beer!
Eventually, actually exactly one month before I got married (14th May 1980), they did marry, mainly because my mum told my dad that it would be nice if she could be married before the last of her children were!!! Quite a character my mum, but she was an absolute star when it came to raising us all. We never wanted for anything, we had food on the table, we had clothes on our backs and we had a family holiday every year, more than most children did back then!
You may wonder why I tell you all this, and the reason is this, when my dad died he had been ill for some time, had in fact just a year before his death had a triple bypass and when he was in hospital waiting for this operation, he asked me to promise him I would look after my mum if he didn't make it. I told him he didn't need to ask, she was my mum and I would always care for her. And this I did! After he died in 1991, I cared for mum, not out of duty, but because I loved her, she was my mum. Shame the rest of her children didn't feel the same. To be fair, Margaret lived in Italy, so couldn't help much, but she did financially support mum (as she did her husband Terry's mother) and gave her an 'allowance' of £50 per month! Pam had never really got on with mum, and after dad passed away she saw mum for the first couple of years but then decided she wanted nothing more to do with her. At the time of mum's death Pam had not seen her for 15 years. My sister Liz had a drink problem, as well as many other hang ups, all of which she blamed on mum, and she had on two occasions attacked my mother, knocking her to the ground. My brother Brian was a typical man, he left it to the girls! So my mum, seven years after my dad passed away and 10 years before her own death, changed the will she made just after Dad passed away and left everything to my two sons, Aaron and Luke. Although she had seven grandchildren, two of those were Pam's children, and she had not had contact with them (they were told by their mother to have nothing to do with her, as were their children - mum's great grandchildren) for 15 years, Liz's boys had not had contact with mum for years, and my niece Jenna (who was the only one who showed any common sense and other than my two sons was the only grandchild to attend her funeral) because she was estranged from her dad, had lost touch with all of us. I would also like to point out that Jenna, on the day of the funeral, had made a comment after listening to the grumbles of Liz and Margaret, that she had never expected anything from her Nan as she had not seen her for almost 13 years, a family member with some morals, quite a novelty!! I had known about the change of will for some time, as had Liz, but when I told the others (Pam did not attend the funeral, she had told me years before she would not as she did not see my mum as her mother!!!) the proverbial hit the fan! Margaret lost the plot, Brian soon became her puppet and pestered me on her behalf, Liz did what she always did and hit the bottle, and bit by bit they made me realise I did not want to be part of that family. My mum left me a notebook with her insurance policy, telling me all that she wanted for her funeral, and to say that she had the last laugh was putting it mildly! As well as leaving everything to my two sons (the others believed it was being split 6 ways - Margaret's dead husband Terry was also included because of the financial support they gave mum and dad), mum had said that she wanted myself and my husband and sons in the first car with Margaret, and she wanted myself and my sons to speak at the funeral. This did not go down well, and neither did the fact that she also didn't want Pam mentioned in the Obituary. After years of being treated badly by her children, mum's wishes were her getting even to a degree, and I for one don't blame her. There is a lot more that went on, but I can't go into it on here! Maybe I should write a book, because our life has more to it than any soap opera!!
My lovely mum with Luke, one of the many Christmases she spent with us!
After caring for my mum for 17 years, taking her shopping, doing her housework, having her here every Christmas, Easter, Bank Holidays, many Sundays for a meal, and talking to her on the phone every day, organising her funeral as requested was the last thing I could do for her, and I was not going to let her down. So I followed her instructions to the letter. This resulted in my 'sister' Margaret asking me the week before the funeral 'what are you going to tell me now' and stating that 'your mother was an evil bitch when she was alive, and she is carrying it on even now she is dead'. She also paid me a compliment and told me that 'you are just like her'!! It was at this point that I decided after the funeral I would have nothing more to do with any of them. They were not my family, in fact if I hadn't looked so much like my parents, I would have been convinced I was adopted! So after the funeral, they went their way, I went mine, and to this day I have not seen them since. I did however receive a very nasty letter from Margaret (who lives in a house worth over three quarters of a million, has no mortgage, and no children) stating that she wanted £20,000 from mum's estate as this was what she had worked out she was 'owed' from the 'allowance' she had paid mum over the years! I did take the letter to the solicitor and he laughed, because she had put 'allowance' in the letter, she would have no leg to stand on! But I did make a decision to write back to her, so I sat down and wrote a list of all the weeks I had done mum's shopping, her housework, done her banking, had her here for a meal, taken her on holiday and all the Christmases and Bank Holidays she had been here, and I totted them all up and put down how much this was worth, and the amount was - PRICELESS! I never heard from her again, I wonder why!!!!
