Remember what Mother did for you and stay safe

ON Mother’s Day I reflected on what my late mother might have gone through in pandemic year.

She died aged 89 in 2005, from an aneurism that took her overnight.

Mam – sometimes Mother but never Mummy – was a survivor of the First World War, the Depression, the Second World War, post-war Austerity and the exigent 50s. Annie Routledge, nee Wood, originally from Methley near Castleford, was widowed in 1972 when my father died of a heart attack just two weeks before he was due to retire early from the railway.

My mother-in-law Win Sowter was widowed tragically early, leaving her a single mum with three to bring up. She, too, died young.

Mrs R, my wife, is a mother of two, grandmother and a great grandmother. Mothering? We got plenty.

Mrs R senior moved from Yorkshire to Sussex, to be nearer my sister (another mother!). She had her own little flat, and the independence she prized.

It was a pretty simple life, worth living. She died very soon after we planned her 90th birthday party over lunch.

I’m glad that she didn’t have to go through the terrors of Covid. The thought of her catching coronavirus and dying on a ventilating machine in an isolation hospital ward is unbearable.

I can’t imagine what it has been like for the sons and daughters of Annie and Win’s generation who lost their mothers, so often alone in their final hours.

To them all I extend my deepest sympathy. And now, for all the mothers taken by this dreadful disease, we must do what we can to protect the elderly.

For their sake, stay safe and never forget the sacrifices they made for us.