My Mum

Mothering Sunday just having passed, my thoughts are now turning to tomorrow. If she'd still been with us, it would have been Mum's 70th birthday tomorrow.

She died back in 1998, so my memories of her are as a 56 year old, but because of her illnesses, she was old before her time, and certainly died too young. She knew the EFG, and loved her totally. We lived in Scotland then, so she liked to travel up to see us quite often. She came up with my dad the week before she died so we had fresh memories of a week spent with the EFG when she died.

The call came at lunchtime to tell me that she had collapsed and been taken into the hospital, but it took us until nearly 3pm to make the travel arrangements and get the responsibilities at home taken care of, so it was 11pm before we made it to the hospital. She was unconscious, but I remember kissing her and telling her that I had brought the EFG to see her, and that I would bring the EFG back in the morning to the hospital. We went home to my parents' house and went to bed. The phone rang just after 1am to say that she had died.

She had been battling against cancer for several years; leiomyosarcoma, I believe her particular battle was called. It started in her uterus, spread to her back, her head, and eventually she had lumps and bumps all over the place, even after enduring several long operations.

And so she never met the YFG, didn't see us move back to England, missed out on all the big milestones in the girls' lives, missed out on her own life so much. And we miss her terribly and still wonder occasionally what life would be like if she was still here.

But she lives on, particularly as I see her every day in the mirror as I am getting older! The EFG shows a lot of signs of being in the same mould as my mum and I. My sister also has a lot of her traits, some we share and some are different but no one could doubt that we are her daughters.