FLOWER FRIDAY

Not a particularly brilliant photograph of these snowdrops, in a pot that has seen better days, but for some reason today, on Flower Friday, I wanted to remember Joan, Mr. HCB’s mother, who was more like a mother than a mother-in-law to me.

Joan was the one who soothed me when I went round to see her if I had issues with my own mother, the one who encouraged me and the one who came to buy my wedding dress with me when my own mother couldn’t be bothered.  

Joan was the one who taught me to sew, and having been a seamstress, she knew everything there was to know about sewing.  She was the one who taught me that to be gentle didn’t mean you were weak, but strong - and she encouraged me to stand firm for what I believed in.  She was the one who was a true grandmother to our two sons, and a wonderful great grandmother to the two great grandchildren she met before she died.

Just like Harry, Mr. HCB’s father, Joan loved her garden and loved nothing better than to go and do a “bit of hoeing and tidying up” and her favourite thing was to have a bonfire at the bottom of the garden.  I can still see her now, going out into the garden at dusk to poke “the bonnie” as she called it, to make sure everything was burned up, but also to make sure it was safe.

Even now, when we go out and especially on a Sunday, I often say to Mr. HCB if we see a particularly beautiful landscape or some lovely flowers, “Your Mum would have loved this” and he has to agree.  She was a wonderful lady and I miss her so much, but these snowdrops that we brought from her garden after she died, more than twenty years ago, remind me of her, so today is my day for memories of Joan and to say thank you to her for being such a wonderful lady and for making my life so much richer.

“Memory is a way of holding on
     to the things you love,
          the things you are and
               the things you never 
                    want to lose.”
Kevin Arnold