A tribute to my Mum

Mum - Eulogy

Valerie Shirley Smith.  Wife, Mother, Grandmother, Mother in law and Friend.  Friend to everyone sat here in this church today.  And didn’t she have some very special friends.

I just want to say a few personal words about my Mum.   I want to share just a few memories out of thousands that I have.  

Whilst i was writing these words I was listening to some Christmas music.  It was a mixture of Slade from the 70’s and traditional hymns sung by Annie Lennox of Eurythmics fame.  It immediately brought Mum back to life for me.  My mum loved Christmas.  She loved it all, the hymns, the family getting together, the big traditional Christmas dinner, decorating the house and even now, she loved the giving and receiving of presents.  One of my earliest memories is of the family going to the Midnight service on Christmas Eve at St John the Baptist church, in our village of Hillmorton during our Rugby years. If i smell a lit candle in a church around Christmas time it immediately transports me back to that time as Mum wanted us to do Christmas the right way and so off to church we all went.  It was also at Mums insistence that me and my brothers had to join the Church choir but after about 5 weeks of going up and down the scales we had a small mutiny and even Mum accepted that Des Ed and myself would not be returning to that particular weekly activity.

The Rugby years were very special for all of us and is where we met Mums special friends, Margaret and Frank.  It would be remiss of me to not mention this as the friendship has endured over 50 years and all of us, parents and children alike have grown up with each other and shared many highs and lows that a friendship of 50 years will bring.  Today your pain is shared by us all.

Mum had many friends, Mille and Ken were there right from her moving from school into the world of employment and were there right through her French adventure living just 12 miles away in a local French village. Another friendship lasting over 50 years. Today your pain is shared by us all.

Family was always important to Mum, not just my Dad and my brothers and i, but her wider family, her younger brother and sister, Geoff and Lynn.  We know you are both hurting today as we all are but you must know that Mum thought the world of both of you.  Today your pain is shared by us all. 

She missed her mum and dad when they both passed away and one of her most precious possessions was the war time diary written by her Father.  I am honoured, having read the contents, to be passed this precocious tome and have promised my mum to look after it and pass it on.  Mum was very proud of her families contribution to the War effort in WW2, as as well as her father, her grandfather was posted to the famous 617 squadron, the Dambusters during the time of the Dams raids and to this day had his mention in dispatches and invitation to the Dams raid reunion party at the Warldorf in London hung on the wall of her house in France.

My mum was a very special woman, a very special lady.  However, she did have some problems.  One of them was technology.  Living in France we found different methods to communicate, occasionally by letter, mostly by phone but sometimes SKYPE.  I’m sure your all familiar with SKYPE, the video phone conferencing facility.  Well, it’s priceless comedy too, especially if you ever had to SKYPE my mum and Dad.  Firstly it was a success if they managed to find the accept button when you dialled them.  You knew you had time to make a cup of tea whilst they both sparred with each other over which button they should press. Is the camera on? Is the screen maximised?  Little did they know they all this mini drama was played out for you whilst you relaxed with said cup of tea as they never ever got to grasp that the camera automatically comes on and we can see them and they didn’t know it.  Dad would peer over his glasses looking at the laptop as though all the instructions were written in mandarin, mum would be looking exasperated at Dads lack of IT technology skills, Dads familiar refrain of ‘Bloody hell Val’ would be repeated and it would only be when We’d had enough comedy value and said hello and let them know that they were already connected that smiles would return and by the magic of pure luck Mum would hit the right button and we were connected, camera to camera, face to face and we’d have a lovely chat.  The pleasure of being able to see each other and show each other things via the camera was immense and helped eat away at the many hundreds of miles between us that a normal phone call couldn't do.   The fun and games would start again however when it was time to say goodbye and sign off.  They’d always ask us to sign off because they didn’t know how to.  Sometimes we’d tease them and we’d all be in fits of laughter as we refused to be the ones to sign off and mum and dad would search desperately for the off button all played out in glorious technicolor on the cam as they bob forward pressing anything they thought would work.  Occasionally they’d stop look up and dad would say to mum, “is it off” and mum would say, “yes i think so” and we’d crack up laughing and state down the line, “nope, not yet it isn’t”  Eventually we’d take pity on them and sign off for them.

If we couldn’t pop over to France for a couple of months, Skype was a great way to keep in touch and even though mums condition would worsen from time to time whenever she could, she always  made the effort to sit in front of the screen to say hello.  One of her favourite funny things was to lop side her wig and ask us what we thought of her new hairstyle.

There’s one thing i want all of you to know.  Mum was a fighter.  She fought this disgusting disease right through to the end.  Her quiet dignity and fighting spirit was a joy to behold and a lesson to me on how to live with pride and dignity.  That, even when you know the worst, when there is nothing more that can be done, you don’t give up, you don’t bemoan the troubles you have and you don’t feel sorry for yourself.  You get on with it and deal with it the best you can.  And that is what mum did. 

 However, she didn't do it on her own.   My dad was right there through every living minute of it.  My dad became my mums dependable rock.  And he was rock solid.  Dad, I've already told you as have Ed and Des, but you are a shining example to us all and we all thank you for what you did for mum in those dark , hard and difficult times.

It was a blessing that Des, Ed, myself and my Dad could all be with her in her final days.  To be able to help nurse her, comfort her and talk to her during the final few days has brought some comfort.  You must all know that everything that could be done to make her passing as peaceful as could be was done.  And with this in mind i have to pay a tribute to the those nurses and doctors from the French Health service who tried everything, including experimental treatment to try to beat her disease.  To the nurses who visited her three times a day at home to the nurses at Poitiers hospital who cared for her at the end.  Some of these nurses and my Mum developed a close bond and a friendship and mums eyes would light up when one of her favourite nurses came into the room to check on her.  To those nurses i salute and thank you.

We have all got many memories and many stories to tell about my Mum.  Some of them you may never have shared before, some will want telling again.  I have a hundred and more such memories and so do my brothers.  Please, come and share them with us after the service and in the weeks and months ahead as it will help us all come to terms with the loss of my mum, Valerie.  We of course will never forget her as will none of us gathered here today.  The telling of these stories will help us keep my treasured mums memory alive.

One of the last things my mum said to all of us in her room in her very last hours was ‘to stick together”  and we will.  My dad, my brothers and i bonded closer in those final days.  The awful days after my mums death when we were still in France trying our best to sort through the devastating impact it had on all of us,  and it was just us four and Dereks eldest, Daniel, showed me that we are strong and we will get through this, and we will always stick together, just as Mum had wanted.   This was Mums last wish and it will always be upheld.

To my brothers and my Dad i say, remember those days in France and when it all comes on top, we are just a phone call away from each other.  

Since my Mum has died I have had a recurring and troubling dream.  I want to share it with you as it sums up how i feel and it maybe how some of you feel too.

It begins with me sat in a back garden, i’m not sure though if it’s mine or my mum and dads but there is something strangely familiar about it.  I’m sat on some raised patio steps looking out at the garden before me.  It’s a long garden with a winding path down the middle of it and I’m watching Mum ambling down the path occasionally stopping to look at the flowers as something in particular catches her eye. She loved her gardens.  Occasionally i look down to pick up a small pebble from the gravel path and each time i look back my mum is further away from me, further down the path.  When i look longer i notice the path goes around a corner and is then lost from view behind an English red wall, the type you find in old English Country house gardens.  It’s then that i get an uneasy feeling in my dream and i want to shout out to my mum to come back, but i know she cannot hear me and i know she will keep on following the path.  I look down at the ground to ponder this and play with the small pebbles and though 55it’s only seconds but when i look back up Mum has gone.  She has followed the path around the corner and I know in that instant that i will not see her again.  I know that i cannot follow her down the path and that suddenly the garden is quiet and feeling empty and that subtly, it’s changed, everything has changed in a very subtle way.  Then the dream ends with me sat on the patio step feeling very sad.  I don’t know why i dream this but i when i replay it i see my mum quite happy looking at the flowers…and that’s okay by me.

Finally i want to thank you all for coming today on behalf of my Father, my brothers and our families. I want to thank you all for enriching my Mums life as that is what all you have done.

God bless my Mum and God bless you all.