Memory of my mother will always be with me
LAST Saturday Eileen and I were at an Arts event in the Emer Gallery.
A lady also attending kindly introduced herself and told me she had been one of the girls in my mother's St John Ambulance troop.
She shared one particular memory. My mother took her St John girls on a picnic each year and indeed I remember the arrangements being made for these trips.
This lady recalled that the picnic was to Tullymore Forest and in typical Ulster fashion, the rain came on.
She said she often recalled my mother's response – "she gathered us all together to huddle under the shelter of the trees and told us to stand in close for warmth.
In her cheery, spirited manner she spread her arms and moved them back and forth over our heads, and smiling, said: 'I wish I were an angel with lovely big wings for then I could cover you all and keep you dry and warm!"
At that moment, I missed my mother.
We are always children when we are in the presence of our parents, and although I am almost 84 years of age, and my mother is long since with her Saviour, that feeling is still stirred when memory, for a spilt second, weaves its spell.
Believe me when I say that one of the most precious and enduring gifts of life is a good mother. No matter how long the time apart, there is a constant of life gone, and it is an irreplaceable constant.
My mother, Isabella, was Scottish. She had a strong character and a kind heart.
She was a talented musician and a gifted speaker – attributes that were put to good use as the wife of a minister.
I often think that she would have made a fine Member of Parliament because she would have been a tenacious advocate for her constituents.
She had a good eye for detail and patiently created some beautiful works of cross-stitch and embroidery, and made tufted fireside rugs for our home.
With the same patience and concern for detail she made sure that all of her children (my elder brother Harold, me, and my younger sister, Margaret) were raised to know what was important, what was trivial, and what was forever.
It was important to obey instructions, to do our homework, to tell the truth, to behave in church and when we had visitors.
It was trivial if we got grass stains on our shorts when we slid down the embankment or climbed trees.
However it was far from trivial when my brother and I made paper boats out of our school reports and sailed them off down the river!
It was forever when aged six I heard my mother tell the Bible story of the lost sheep and afterwards asked the Good Shepherd to be my Saviour.
Every year on Mother's Day, with a full heart, I thank God for the mother He gave me, for the mother He has given my children and for the mothers they have become.
Motherhood is the most important job in the world and far more difficult than rocket science!
Foot note
Michael Foot was an unusual politician and a genuine man.
He has rightly been described as one of the finest Parliamentarians of our day.
He was an eloquent speaker and a prolific writer. His marriage was an old fashioned love affair. The press were hostile to him and openly mocked him.
His 700-page 1983 manifesto was famously described as 'the longest suicide note in history' when it led as it did to Labour only polling 27.7 per cent, and Margaret Thatcher coming to power.
He certainly employed neither spin-doctor nor image consultant, and was fiercely criticised for attending the cenotaph wearing what the media said was "a donkey jacket".
He was too much of a gentleman to answer his media critics by using the fact that the Queen Mother had earlier complimented the same jacket.
It is interesting to note that his 'longest suicide note in history' promised to nationalise the banks!
Evidence, if it were required, that you should never judge a politician by his overcoat.
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Tuesday 14 February 2012
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