Mum kept her PROMISE
She said she’d NEVER leave me. By Valerie Purdy, 72
The end was near. My mum Wynn’s cancer had spread and, as I sat at her bedside, she was drifting in and out of consciousness.
‘Hey you,’ I said, lying across her bed. ‘You’re not leaving me, are you?’
Mum’s eyes snapped open and sparkled as she replied fiercely: ‘I would never leave you!’
Sadly she never really regained consciousness after that, passing just two days later in May 2015, my daughter Michelle and me at her side.
It didn’t seem real. Although she was 91, in her head, Mum had still been 30!
At her funeral we played Somewhere Over the Rainbow, which was my granddad – her dad’s – favourite song. Mum even had a clockwork plate that played the melody hanging on the wall in her bedroom.
We scattered her ashes in the sea opposite my home in Hornsea, East Yorkshire, so I could still see her every day. ‘Morning Mum,’ I’d say, whenever I headed out the front door.
Afterwards I remembered her vow and waited for some firm sign that she was still around, but weeks passed then months with nothing from her.
One night I had a dream I was falling from the ceiling and thought I heard her voice as I was waking up, asking how I was doing…
‘Not so good, Mum,’ I replied honestly. But afterwards I wasn’t sure whether it had just been part of the dream.
When I visited psychics they’d say things that sounded like confirmation
Mum had come through, but I didn’t get the signs I was hoping for myself…
Mum had always loved travelling, so Michelle and I decided to go on an annual trip in her memory each May, which is my birthday month, as well as the anniversary of her passing.
In May 2019 Michelle and I headed to Las Vegas on our annual holiday to remember Mum.
It was a hot day and we were looking for a hotel on the famous ‘Strip’ to cool down in, when we spotted one called: ‘The Wynn’.
Well, as it had the same name as Mum of course we had to go in!
We’d walked right through and were waiting for the lift to take us down a floor when Michelle suddenly stood stock still and said: ‘Listen!’
They were playing Somewhere Over the Rainbow!
‘Mum!’ I whispered as Michelle nodded.
We both stood, awestruck as we listened to the whole thing.
That song playing, in The Wynn hotel, on a holiday to celebrate Mum’s life, was too much of a coincidence for it not to be the sign I’d longed for.
It was such a comfort, at last, to have absolute confirmation that Mum has kept her promise.
She said she’d never leave me – and now I know she hasn’t.