Remembering Edwina

It’s Mother’s Day and today we’re getting ready to launch our new website, Eulogies for You.

I’m remembering today my two mothers—Edwina, my birth mother and Olwyn, my step-Mum (who I’ll write about in another post).

Edwina died after a short illness at the young age of 33, when I was 5 and my two sisters a few years older. Dad had followed the ambulance to the hospital where we hoped Mum would get better. By the time he got back to our driveway, he was stopped by two friends at the gate to tell him that they’d been phoned by the hospital to say that his wife had died. He then walked inside the door to break to us kids the shocking news of Mum’s death.

My sisters and I never attended Mum’s funeral. We stayed with our neighbour as we’d been told that funerals were not good events for kids. I wonder what was said about Mum in the service. How was she remembered by family, neighbours and friends?

 I’ve spent a lot of time like a magpie, collecting little bits of information about Edwina. My relationship was as a child to an adult. I wish I could have got to know her as an adult. I would have asked her:

 + What was it like growing up in the little coal-mining village in Wales?

+ What motivated you to become a nurse and work in London?

+ How did you feel when you first met Dad at the dance?

+ What made you think it was right to get married only a few days later?

+ What were your thoughts and feelings about leaving your family, going to New Zealand and starting a new life?

 My questions are endless but any fragment of information we snatch and any recollection we receive from someone who knew our loved one, can help us to remember and such memories can help us to work through our grief.

 These memories that we amass and treasure, help us to know and honour our loved ones. They foster gratitude for the contribution they made and continue to make to our lives.

This new website is to honour people like you, Mum.