Emma, I get it (Twenty years after Mum died, I still don’t know how to mark the day, 22 October). It has been 22 years since my mother died. Every year is different; I am still darning the jumper, fully aware that it can never be the same again. This year, I am reading your article lying on a beach in Sri Lanka. This morning I woke up sobbing, releasing built-up emotions held deep within for far too long.
Usually I just think about her, the way she brought us up, a widow, stoically alone, how she suffered, and how I watched her take her final breaths that October morning after I placed three gentle kisses on her right cheek.
I have also tried different ways to mark this anniversary – lighting candles, planting roses, praying in church – but none have delivered peace for my soul or enabled me to let her go. I have also returned to significant places.
This morning, I knew immediately what I should do. I strolled along the beach and picked a beautiful pink flower. Then I made my way peacefully to the edge of the sea and let her go. The waves brought her back to me one last time before the petals were swept away.
Meanwhile, my husband was swimming in the sparkling sea and he never knew. Only she and I, together for a few moments, and now drifting peacefully until we meet again.
Anne Harvey
Ridlington, Rutland
• On my mother’s birthday my brother and I often meet at her seat in Soho Square, dedicated after she died with a plaque remembering her and our father.
They met, married and lodged in Soho, and had two children. He was killed in Germany at the end of the war, three weeks before I was born. Later my mother worked for decades in offices overlooking the square, with the front door in Greek Street. From Soho Square my brother and I might continue down the street for coffee and cake at Maison Bertaux, virtually unreconstructed since wartime when our father David mentioned it in a letter to Annette, our mum.
Anne Boston
London
• I was moved by Emma Beddington’s account of her mother, Sally Baldwin, more so as the 41st anniversary of my mother’s death approaches next month. I met Sally a couple of times, at York University in 1992 when she led a discussion about her team’s evaluation of a project I managed which attempted to deliver joined-up services for older people, and at a Christmas party in 2002 at the home of a mutual friend. The evidence of her influence continues and I hear her name spoken with fondness and respect. Anniversaries are a time to reflect, but light is always shining.
Janet Dean
York
• Reading Emma Beddington’s article was timely for me. My dad died suddenly on 20 October 2002, when I was just 33. He liked a whisky very much, as did I. But on that horrible day, I pledged never to drink whisky again, except on 20 October to have a toast to him.
In the 21 years since then, I have made a cranachan and had a glass of whisky each anniversary. I’ve got a tatty piece of paper that I write where I am and what I’m doing on that day, from holidays with unsuitable boyfriends in the Lake District, to getting engaged in South Africa, and three times being pregnant and having a tiny sip of whisky. It’s emotional every year, but nicely so.
Cathy Bergs
Worton, North Yorkshire
• My mum and I could burst into uncontrollable giggles together at the slightest opportunity. Sixteen years ago, very shortly before her death, I pushed her in a borrowed wheelchair around a large local Marks & Spencer store. I can’t remember which item of clothing set off our mirth, but I can remember the joy we felt in one another’s company. This Sunday will see me in Marks & Spencer trying to recapture that moment.
Nicola Campbell
Macclesfield, Cheshire
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