Mum

As night follows day, mum follows dad. 

To be honest it was more day following night as he died on Sunday night, and she caught up with him on Monday morning, 11 hours later. 

It doesn't say broken heart on her death certificate, or gave up, but she was hanging around for him, and he'd sadly gone before they could spend any more time together. If I could change one thing it would have been that they both would have made it to the hospice room that was being arranged for them. Wasn't to be.

I don't remember her like that, I tend to remember like she is portrayed in this photo. A teacher, she always was a teacher. Ironically most of the photos I now have of her are from before I even arrived, in black and white. Neither her or dad took pictures of themselves, lots of places they had been, trains they had travelled on to churches they had visited and pipe organs they had then played, although clearly that was dad. They were generally too busy organising stuff for others when they weren't teachers, the day job bled into the weekends, evenings and holidays.

Anyway, here's a bunch of children who are either at a school in Ashton, before she was married to dad, or one of her first classes at Tonacliffe, where she taught for all the time they lived in Rochdale. If the picture was colour then I think my brain could place the curtains, I mean, I think they were orange.

The kids in this class are a right mix of abilities, and also height, look at the ones on the back row, what are they stood on? Mum was 5ft max, wonder if there was a risk assessment done for this, surely when the flash went off people could have been startled?

Wonder how many of these are still with us now, mum would have been 82 this year, so these may all be around 65ish at a guess. No one is obese are they, fast food hadn't started. 

She taught from around 1965 to 1995 if memory serves, must have taught thousands of kids over the years. For some she'll have been that teacher we all remember.

I like that.