THE DAY I WENT TO THE FUNERAL

I decided to go to by train to my mum’s funeral on Wednesday 18 January. I thought it would be easier than driving through Bradford and having to find car parking. I couldn’t have been more wrong if I’d tried. Here is what happened. I haven’t made any of it up.

04:15

The alarm goes off. I get out of bed, shower and get dressed in my dark suit. I check to see if I have everything – phone, mum’s eulogy, clean underpants in case I have an accident. I pull on my dark coat, leave the house and head off to the railway station.

05:10

I pick up my pre-ordered day return ticket from the machine at Carlisle station. After asking a member of staff about trains to Preston I’m directed to Platform 1 where the 05:15 train is waiting. I’ll be in plenty of time to catch the connection to Bradford. What could possibly go wrong?

The train leaves the station and two minutes later the guard checks my ticket.

“Are you sure you want to be on this train?” he asks.

“This is the Preston, isn’t it?” I say.

“Yes. But this is the one that goes all the way around the west coast. It takes four hours to get to Preston.”

“You’re joking! I need to be at my mum’s funeral in Bradford at 11:30.”

“That’s not going to happen if you stay on this train. Whoever told you to get on this train was an idiot. He should have directed you to 05:18 mainline train that left from Platform 4.”

“Any suggestions about what I should do?”

“Well I can let you out at Dalston, but it’s in the middle of nowhere. You’ll have to make your way back to Carlisle from there.”

05:25

Get off the train at Dalston. It’s pitch black. There are no taxis or buses and it’s a four and a half mile walk back to Carlisle. It’s a dark morning. I’m walking down a dark road. I’m wearing dark clothes. What could possibly go wrong?

05:35

I get hit by a car. The first thing that comes into my mind, after saying Ow, is thank goodness I’m wearing clean underwear. The car’s wing mirror caught me on the wrist and it’s quite painful. Thankfully nothing’s broken. Even more thankfully the driver stops and gives me a lift to Carlisle. I explained to him what had happened and that I was on my way to my mum’s funeral, but all he says is that I should have been wearing reflective clothing. I don’t think wearing reflective clothing is appropriate for a funeral and besides, if I’d been wearing reflective clothing the driver would have driven straight past me and I would have had to walk the entire four and a half miles, thereby probably missing the next train to Preston.

06:49

I catch the next train to Preston. As I’m sitting there looking at the bruise that’s forming on my wrist I think how lucky I was getting a lift. More importantly I think how lucky I was not to get killed on dark road.

Everything goes well from that moment on. I change at Preston and board the correct train to Bradford.

10:02

Arrive in Bradford. I’m picked up at the station by my son Daniel and his wife, Katy. My sister, Anne, and her husband, Gary and their two sons Dwayne and Keiron are all just about ready and we leave for the Crematorium.

11:45

Mum’s funeral is non-denominational because we are a family of atheists. The service was very nice and I’m asked to read out mum’s eulogy. Because it’s a celebration of her life and not a sombre event I wrote the eulogy in a light tone. Here it is:

Edith Owen was a fantastic cook. She made lip-smacking Lancashire Hot-Pots, delicious Ham Shank in Thick Pea Soup, gravy rich Steak and Kidney Puddings and belt-tightening Full English Breakfasts. She made all-sundry of perfectly cooked roast dinners with all the trimmings. She baked cakes, biscuits, fruit loaves and bread and Rice Pudding that everyone fought over in order to get the most skin. Unfortunately her daughter – my mum – did not inherit many of my grandma’s extraordinary culinary skills and instead cooked almost exclusively from tins and packets and wondered what the best thing was before sliced bread. Mum was not a natural cook. Her cooking skills were not gleaned from Fanny Craddock or the Galloping Gourmet but from the instructions on the tins of Fray Bentos pies and Campbell’s Soups, and her idea of a square meal was an OXO cube.

Here’s a story my wayward brother, David, told me once. He was working as a drayman in Blackpool and when he returned home tired and hungry after his first hard day of draying he was expecting mum to have prepared him a hearty meal. As he walked into the house mum informed him that his tea was ready for him in the kitchen. As he stepped into the kitchen the first thing he noticed was the complete absence of any cooking aromas. This was followed by the realisation that there were no pots or pans of delicious food on any of the rings on the top of the oven. In puzzlement he asked mum where his tea actually was.

 “It’s right next t’kettle,” mum called back. “You can’t miss it.”

On closer inspection of the kitchen area my bother did indeed notice that his tea was stood proudly next the kettle. It was not, as he had expected, a delicious pie stuffed with meat and potatoes or a hearty stew packed with fresh vegetables. It was, instead, that cornerstone of any nutritional diet, a Batchelor’s Pot Noodle, and propped next to it, placed there by mum’s own fair hand, was a fork.

“But it’s just a Pot Noodle,” said David, “and I’ve been working all day.”

“Stop your complaining,” said mum, “I’ve taken the top off and boiled the kettle for you.”

Mum used to call me ‘Hollow Legs’ because I grew up living with the kind of physiology that could devour any amount of food without putting on one ounce of weight. Back in the late 1960s I worked as a Commis Chef in a hotel in Blackpool and I used to love watching big-boned women (as mum used to call them) slavering as I tucked into mountainous piles of mashed potatoes and slabs of steak the size of my head, knowing that just a morsel of what I was eating would put pounds onto their hips.

Mum once tried to set me up with the daughter of one her friends and as soon as she told me she was big-boned I knew exactly what she meant.

“She’s just big-boned, Stephen,” she said.

“You mean fat, don’t you mum.”

“You cheeky bugger; you never listen to what I tell you. She’s a right nice girl, she is – too bloody good for you, that’s for sure. I don’t know why I bother.”

It didn’t matter, though, if my girlfriends were big-boned, small-boned or had no bones the same thing would happen whenever I took one of them home to meet my mum. The first thing she would do would be to tell them all about any embarrassing mishaps that had occurred throughout my entire life up until that exact moment in time. And the second thing she would do was to reach for the dreaded photograph album, which always seemed uncannily ready to hand. Her fingers would nimbly skip through the pages until she reached one particular black-and-white image. It was taken by her using her old Box-Brownie camera and it showed me as a cute, loveable blonde-haired six year old on a summer’s day at Morecambe Bay wearing what can only really be described as a girl’s swimming costume that my mum had knitted out of wool. Mum would sit there with my girlfriend, pointing at the photograph and cackling to herself and say, “Ooh, wasn’t he a lovely little boy? And look at him now, the lanky, long-haired lout.”

She may have said to me, “I don’t know why I bother,” but, the thing is, she did bother, because she loved all three of her children, even my wayward brother. She walked away from all her marriages clean, taking nothing with her except her children.

So how do I remember my mum? Well, she was an intelligent, well-read woman with a sharp, idiosyncratic, often sarcastic sense of humour.

She called the music I listened to ‘heebie-jeebie’ music, but she liked Cliff Richard, preferring his bland, insipid version of rock’n’roll to that of the hip-swinging, electrifying sound of Elvis Presley, thereby proving (to me at least) that she had absolutely no taste in music whatsoever.

Material things meant nothing to her and she happily gave away all my treasured Marvel and DC comics to a jumble sale after I left home to join the RAF in 1970 (a collection that is now worth hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of pounds). But I’m not bitter about that.

She was stubborn and determined and she didn’t suffer fools. She told people exactly what she thought of them. She was small of frame but a giant fireball of rage when angered.

In her forties she lied about her age constantly, passing herself off as younger than she was, until she reached an age where she was happy to admit how old she actually was. At the age of eighty-one she had lived longer than any member of her family before her, something of which she immensely proud.

She moved here to Bradford from Plymouth when she was seventy-nine. I had just begun working in the Middle East and Anne and Gary cared for her and showed her love and understanding in her final years as dementia began to tighten its grip on her once sharp and active mind.

When we were together we often annoyed the hell out of each other and we fell out frequently and sometimes didn’t speak to each other for great lengths of time. But when all’s said and done I loved her as all sons should love their mothers and I will remember her as an amazingly strong woman who lived a life full of surprises and she was loved, not just by me, but by everyone who knew her.

12:15

We go to the Care Home where mum spent the last four months of her life. Sandwiches, nibbles and drinks have been put on. I have a couple of rather large whiskies and then at 14:00 we go to the pub, where I drink too many beers and we all tell funny stories we remember about mum. By the time I have to leave to catch my train my cheekbones are aching with laughing so much. It was, as it should have been, a real celebration of mum’s life. She would have liked it. It’s just a pity she wasn’t there to enjoy it.

19:30

I’m on the train to Preston. I’ve been up since 04:15. I’m tired and a bit drunk. What could possibly go wrong?

20:13

I wake up as the train is pulling into Poulton-le-Fylde.

Poulton-le-Fylde is two stops after Preston.

I jump on the next train back to Preston, but arrive there at 21:50, four minutes after the last train to Carlisle. The next one is a 05:45 the following morning.

I’m advised by one of the station staff to try the bus station. There maybe, she tells me, a bus to Carlisle. It’s worth a shot.

22:10

The earliest bus to Carlisle is a National Express coach at 02:10 that gets me into Carlisle at 04:15. It’s a four hour wait in a cold bus station, but it’s worth it.

04:25

Arrive back at my flat, tired and perhaps a little wiser from the experience of the last twenty-four hours.

I'd like to thank everyone for their kind words of condolence when I announced the passing of my mum on 30 December 2016. They were a great comfort to me and my sister on that sad day. Her ashes were spread off North Pier in Blackpool on 28 January.

Mum

All I knew of the young man who would one day become my father was what I saw of him on a dog-eared rectangle of photographic paper and the thin morsels of information that were fed to me by my mother. He was in an army uniform, awaiting his demob after serving his compulsory two years of National Service. It was a bright, cold, wintry afternoon. He was sitting on the sea wall in Blackpool with his arm around the shoulders of a young woman who would one day become my mother. They were both smiling, carefree and joyous smiles of reckless abandon, as an unseen and unknown person clicked the button that, in a fraction of a second, opened and closed the camera’s shutter, capturing for all eternity that one cherished moment of love. It was December 1953. They were both twenty-three years old. What you can’t see in the photograph is me. I was a small insignificant dot in my mother’s womb, but I was alive and over the following nine months I would grow and the man in the army uniform would do the ‘honourable’ thing and marry the young woman. They would become my parents. 

Those two years, 1953 and 1954, were to herald great changes for Britain in the twilight of its Empire. An old king died and a radiant, beautiful new queen was crowned. Everest was finally conquered by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay. Watson and Crick unravelled the double helix of DNA. Ian Fleming published Casino Royale, unleashing secret agent James Bond 007 into the world. Blackpool FC, with the great Stanley Matthews and Stan Mortenson, beat Bolton Wanderers 4-3 to win the FA Cup Final.  Roger Bannister became the fastest man on earth by breaking the four-minute mile. Dylan Thomas died in St Vincent’s Hospital in New York and two months later his masterpiece Under Milk Wood was broadcast for the first time on the BBC Third Programme with Richard Burton as First Voice. Rationing came to an end. And I gasped my first breath as all 6lb 4oz of me tumbled into this bright new Elizabethan age where anything was possible.

The marriage didn’t last long – barely eighteen months – and my father became just an image on a black-and-white photograph. He was a mystery. But his image exerted a power over me that I could not explain. My mother only spoke of him whenever I questioned her about what he was like. At first her reaction to my enquiries was guarded, but over time my questions were met with annoyance and suspicion and her answers became increasingly vague and nebulous. But, on that bright, cold December afternoon in 1953, all was well with the world and love was, as they sometimes say, all around.

I often wonder if my father was smiling because of the love he felt for the young woman sat beside him or because he was just happy to be leaving the army. I couldn’t say for sure, but I could see that my mother changed when she looked at that photograph. The dog-eared edges of its rectangular frame and the look in her eyes betrayed her carefully hidden feelings. There was a sadness there, a faraway look that only the forlorn eyes of a wounded lover can convey. Maybe, I thought, he had been the one, the love of her life that she let slip through her buttery fingers, and with the passing of years she was desperately trying to erase him from her memory, to remove the sting of pain that only lost love can deliver.

My mother remarried three times, each time unsuccessfully, until she found a kind of peace living on her own in Plymouth. She lied about her age constantly, passing herself off as younger than she was, until she reached a point in her life where she was happy to admit how old she actually was. At the age of eighty-one she had lived longer than any member of her family before her, something which she immensely proud of. Material things meant nothing to her and she happily gave away all my treasured comics to a jumble sale when I left home to join the Royal Air Force (a collection that is now worth hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of pounds). She walked away from all her marriages clean, taking nothing with her except her children – me, my brother, David, and my sister, Anne. She was an intelligent, well-read woman with a sharp, often sarcastic sense of humour. She was stubborn and determined and she didn’t suffer fools. She told people exactly what she thought of them. She was small of frame but a giant fireball of rage when angered. We fell out frequently and sometimes didn’t speak to each other for great lengths of time.

At the age of seventy-nine she upped sticks and moved to Bradford to live with my sister and her husband, Gary, who cared for her and showed her love and understanding in her final years as dementia began to tighten its grip on her once sharp and active mind.

On Wednesday 28 December 2016 she had a massive heart attack. Gary contacted me and said that if I wanted to say goodbye to her then I should get to Bradford Royal Infirmary as soon as possible. The nurses told Anne and Gary that she was in terminal decline. They didn’t expect her to be still alive when I reached Bradford that evening. Whenever I phoned my mother I always asked her how she was. Her reply was always, “Still alive.” Although she was not conscious when I reached the Infirmary, she was still alive, she could hear us. The nurses hadn’t counted on her stubbornness and her unwillingness to let her life slip away that easily. Her breathing was laboured but she was still fighting when I had to leave at 10am the following morning.

Anne and Gary gave me a few moments with her. I kissed her on the cheek and whispered, “Goodbye, mum. I love you. Say hello to Grandma and Granddad for me.” I couldn’t know for sure if she heard me or even knew who I was but I like to think that she did hear my words. And I knew at that moment that, despite our differences and our petty squabbles and our long periods of silence, I, like all boys, loved my mother.

I shook hands with Gary and thanked him. I held my sister and kissed her. Then I left. Anne had told me earlier that morning that I should go, that there was nothing more I could do and I felt relieved. I wanted to say goodbye to my mother but I didn’t want to watch her die. I wanted to remember her as she was in that dog-eared photograph from long ago – young and in love and full of life.

For my mum 22 May 1930 – 30 December 2016