Mummy- 28th May 1941-14th September 2007

Mummy lost her battle with breast cancer at 2.00pm on Friday 14th September 2007. She has been battling since November 1995.
This is May this year and she went down really quickly after this. She loved Daddy, Jennifer and I, and all the animals that people our lives. I can't believe that she is gone. Her funeral is tomorrow and I ask everyone who reads this to say a prayer for her.
Mummy with her cousin Uncle Julien Hobson.

How do you sum up a life in minutes? How do you describe all that now lives in us because of her life?

She was so loved. The complete centre of the family. The hub around which we all revolved. It was inconceivable that cancer could take her away from us. She loved us with a ferocity that knew no bounds and could never bear to consider that she would have to leave us.

She has fought so hard over the last 12 years that this may be her defining legacy, But there was so much more to her.

She loved her husband, children, horses, dogs, cats, and gardening. We learnt tolerance and kindness from her and, for all that know our family, a ridiculous love of animals. A steady stream of kittens, puppies, ducks, macaws and budgies to name a few, paraded through our childhood home. Each with its own distinct song. Mummy loved music. In her last days, her ipod was a source of tremendous comfort. While she never sang to us, and I seriously doubt that she sang to Daddy, she did have an endless repertoire of ditties for each animal that could vary from day to day. She read voraciously and while, deeply spiritual, never accepted dogma on face value. She lived her Christianity and was one of the easiest people to talk to, always striking up conversations with the oddest people in the strangest places.

She loved Mayaro, playing Pada with Uncle Jack and Auntie Shirley, walking on the beach, visiting to fire a few, and enjoying Melvina’s cooking. Our parents were highly social and enjoyed nothing more than having people over for drinks and old talk. She loved the excitement of carnival, sewing for Wayne Berkeley and playing with him for years. Her bags were always packed and she adored traveling with Daddy and they became quite the globetrotters in recent years, truly enjoying their empty nest years. We will all feel her in the garden, in the kitchen, in the orchids that have come down from her grandmother.

She taught us to love life and embrace it with grace and compassion. It was a privilege to have her as a mother.

So goodbye for now, Mummy. You are still so alive in each of us but we will miss you every second of every day until we meet again. I wonder who will choose your earrings for you in heaven? Or remind you to wear lipstick? I hope you make lots of friends there and let them know how lucky they are to have you there.