Thank you so much to all of you for coming from the different areas of Mum’s life. Thank you especially to our American cousins who have flown over for just three days to be here. Thank you Mark, Lisa and yes there are two Benjamin Blacknells here. Thank you for coming. We really appreciate it.
My cousins, my mum’s sister Maureen’s daughters, Sharon and Nicola, who are here today, had a red setter when we were growing up called Petra. We used to look after her sometimes. My mum and I would get some funny looks in Kelsey Park and after a while we realised it was because we all had a lot of red hair. How, I long for those funny looks now! My mum did a much better job of passing things on to me than with the red hair!
When I was a kid standing outside Shortlands station, I once asked her if I was held hostage would she be willing to die in my place. As quick as a flash she replied “Of course I would”. She thought it was obvious. My entire childhood had a sense of security and value. Somebody was really looking after and out for me. In my work now I see the consequences in adulthood when love and sacrifice are absent from childhood. My own childhood could not have been more different.
Now I was never taken hostage, unless you include the attempts to teach us bridge and read pretty much anything, so Mum never got the chance to die in my place. But I do think, like Liam Neeson in the film Taken, Mum had a ‘particular set of skills’, five in particular that I’d like to highlight, that made her the most fantastic mother to someone like me.
Skill 1 – she performed loving acts of kindness and service, every day, without fuss. When I was up late with homework, Mum would bring me a delicious sandwich, maybe some toast, a cup of tea and my favourite biscuits. My school friends Matthew (who is here today) and Mohammad were always welcomed in our home, for dinner and overnight, as if it was their own. She was really interested in how they were and their future plans. She laughed, rather than got angry at the mess, when Mohammad and I had chopped up what seemed like all the garlic in Beckenham to cook my first curry. My hands smelled for ages as did that chopping board.
I played a lot of sport at school and every day my kit came home dirty but by the following day was immaculate. She had a particular specialism in white rugby shorts. I continued taking my washing home to my mum until I got married and that has come up on other occasions.
These may seem like small things, but they were everyday acts of kindness. And as a kid everyday kindness really matters.
When I look back, Mum gave me an incredible personal security and sense of self-worth. I knew she really loved me. She loved me enough to want me to leave home and live my own life, except for the washing. She never guilted me into coming back to see them. She wanted me to be independent, secure and happy.
Skill 2, Mum was farm-strong. She tested positive for Covid four times while in her care home and each time was asymptomatic. I inherited her Quigley metabolism which really is a gift. When we lived in Atlanta we used to go to this Italian family style restaurant called Maggiano’s where they bring you unlimited quantities of the food. It might be a rationing as well as a farming thing. Her favourite dessert is tiramisu and I’m not kidding you, she emptied that kitchen. The kids and we looked on in awe as they came back with portions designed for the whole table and mum kept polishing them off.
Dad used to say about Mum that “nobody works as hard as your mum”. Our daily routine was that she went to work during the day and then worked all night. She cooked us dinner, we did some homework and then watched tv. Mum carried on working. She had amazing green fingers in the garden, she could just touch a plant and it seemed to jump to life and colour. She made jam and marmalade, and could knit or mend anything. When Anna and Libby were about 3 and 5 years old she made them these elaborate flamenco dresses. They lasted years and they absolutely loved them.
You can tell your kids to work hard and be ambitious for them but I watched somebody work hard, all the time and it affected my heart. It motivated me to be better, do better, try harder. Recently, one of my children has said I have an obsession with us not quitting and that can be difficult. But I’ll take that. In cross country races, when it started to hurt, I would remember that I’m my mother’s son.
I remember one of our disastrous family decorating projects, to be fair probably instigated by Mum. We were trying to strip some old wallpaper off, I think, Kenwood Drive. It was like concrete and was not going well. The skin was coming off my knuckles. We had even hired some sort of steamer-thing, so it must have been bad. We never hired things. I went to bed at midnight having done maybe a few square feet of the staircase. I came down the next morning and it was completely stripped and finished. Dad just looked at me and said “Yeah, Mum got the bit between her teeth”.
He had the same look on his face as when he told me that mum had decided we should do more exercise as a family. That’s when we started these weekly one mile runs. They developed into twice weekly trips to the gym and to the local swimming pool. For decades Mum got Dad to do this and I have to say it was really good for him. I don’t think mum needed it at all, except maybe to burn off all that excess tiramisu. She continued to think she was capable of any physical feat including, most recently, her press-up demonstration between courses at a Christmas dinner. Jed and Ben were about to correct her technique but then just said “you gotta respect that”.
Skill 3 – Mum talked to me about everything, even feelings. For an inquisitive kid this was great. I asked her about smoking when I was ten. She gave me a few puffs of her cigarette and said it was a really terrible, expensive habit. I never smoked again and she gave up within a few years.
Over time I think her talking and openness changed dad. Just before Dad died, he told me that when they came back to an empty home, having just dropped Paul and me off at university, me for the first time, Mum walked into our family bathroom and saw only two toothbrushes and burst out crying.
I’ve read about two different personality-types in conflict. People tend to be either rhinos or hedgehogs. Either they curl up and keep it in like a hedgehog or they let it all out and charge like a rhino. Which one do you reckon Mum was? She was a rhino. Almost everything came out eventually, and not always perfectly, but largely because she cared so much about me, Paul and my dad. We often heard them coming back from the bridge club and Mum would be in rhino-mode. But they had always made up by the morning.
We used to bulk buy food from a place called Nurdin & Peacock. This was an exciting trip out for Paul and me and a stressful one for Mum as we would try and influence her shopping choices as well as run wild inside this vast warehouse. It also meant Mum had to hide the box of 48 Mars bars from us. She clearly thought it was unreasonable to expect us not to eat them if we found them. I agree with that logic. But one day she forgot that she had hidden them in the washing machine with disastrous consequences. Fortunately my white rugby shorts were not in that load. That must have been so annoying for her but all I can remember is Paul and I still ate those Mars bars and they weren’t that bad.
Skill 4, she loved my dad. While Paul and I were living with Dad in his last few months before he died, I asked him how they had met and why he had asked her to marry him. He said she was the kindest, loyal, most faithful person he had ever met. That is quite a compliment. He said “she was a one-off”. She was really good to him and for him.
Paul and I were driving Mum and Dad back from Nottingham in 2018 and had stopped at a rather grim service station. It was dark and raining. We both jumped out of the car and ran across the car park into the warmth and comfort of the services. I looked back to a sight I will never forget – Dad and Mum walking slowly through the cold rain, Dad patiently holding my mum’s hand and arm and guiding her slowly to the covered area. They lived out their marriage vows, in sickness and in health, till death did them part. I will never forget their example in marriage.
Skill 5, Mum walked with God. She knelt by her bed every night to pray before going to bed. Mum rarely talked about her faith when we were growing up but she prayed for all of us. When we went back to Ireland, I saw how central the Christian faith was to her wider family. It made me think the move from rural Ireland to an increasingly secular London must have really challenged her belief in God. Initially I think Mum questioned whether her faith was relevant or true but over time she found it too hard not to believe. They shared their faith and they made this church their spiritual home.
But I don’t want to pass over her Alzheimers. She and we hated the illness that has blighted these last few years. I’ve talked a lot to God and Dad about Alzheimers. It has been very, very hard to lose Mum so gradually and I know she would not have liked finishing like this. But perhaps we would have struggled to lose her quickly. We have been able to say a long goodbye. The church also provided crucial and excellent advice and care at key moments for Mum and us. Some of you are here today and we would have been so much worse off without you.
Now when I was very young, I was very frightened of death and eternity. I would come into Mum and Dad’s bedroom in the middle of the night saying “I can’t sleep because I keep thinking about death”. I am so grateful none of my children have ever done that. It would be terrifying! I can’t remember their answers because they didn’t really matter. I just fell asleep in their arms and woke up and everything was alright again.
We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.
For you, Lord, have delivered me from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling, that I may walk before the Lord in the land of the living.
Mum and Dad, thank you so much for being my mum and dad. I will see you again in the land of the living.