inhermemory.com

It’s been less than 24hrs since I posted a message out asking for people to vote on how I should honour mum’s memory, and I’m truly staggered at the incredible ideas that are coming back in. Honestly, there must be so many giving, caring, community-minded people out there and I consider myself lucky to have such people on my list and willing to brainstorm and spark off some ideas with me.

The creative juices have well and truly started flowing, but please keep the ideas coming. It’s truly inspiring to read and to realise the number of ways a lone individual can make a meaningful difference. I might even end up turning it into an ebook and giving it away as part of the celebrations! (If you haven’t voted yet, visit http://inhermemory.com/poll)

On reading the entries people had submitted to me, I realised that having them buried in a back-end database just wasn’t good enough, so I hunted down some technical stuff and found out how to publish them on the poll and results pages. Initially it was publishing email addresses too, but I believe in privacy and wasn’t going to put anybody’s at risk of spam or other abuse, so I kept digging. I think I’ve just had a crash course in php programming, but in the end I customised it to display only name and time/date details for each comment.

The more I read of your ideas, the bigger I want this thing to grow, and the more people I want it to touch. Feel free to email this link to a friend (use the ’share this’ button below) and help spread the message: people today DO care!

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It’s hard to believe, but a year ago today I was at my mother’s bedside as she struggled against one of the hardest battles a person can fight - cancer. I was lucky enough that I did get to say goodbye, and to tell her how much she meant to me, before she slipped away from us that night, but it seems like maybe a few months - no way a whole year!

Every time I think about it the tears flow again. Writing this isn’t easy, but I feel I have to.

We’re Irish born in my family, so after I studied Celtic religion at University, we had some great discussions about the pre-christian traditions: they used to believe that birth was a time to mourn, because life could be hard, but death was an occasion to celebrate once a soul had earnt its freedom. She loved that idea, and asked me to try to follow it in her own case - to celebrate her life instead of mourning her death.

So when my sister asked if I would be putting a notice in the paper on the annivarsary, it didn’t feel right to me. I decided that I wanted to celebrate her birthday on the 15th of November instead, and I wanted to do something special - because she was the kind of person who inspired you that way. I have no idea yet what I’m going to do, but I do know I want it to be BIG. I’m asking for ideas and opinions on the thoughts I have had - if you can spare two seconds to vote at http://www.inhermemory.com/poll/ it would be fantastic.

Meanwhile, I’m going to post my memories, thoughts and anything else I can think of about her up here, so you can get to know her like I was lucky enough to do…

Crystal

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While I’m setting up this site in honour and memory of my mother, I remembered one time I met up with her for lunch on her birthday.  I’d saved to get her a necklace that had some diamond fragments in it, and gave it to her along with a poem I’d written.  (I wasn’t long out of Uni, so I was in a bit of a wordy phase…) I’d like to share it here, so you can understand what she meant to me, and how much she had to offer.

To a mother who means the world to me: with Love

Words may struggle valiantly to express the way I feel,
yet come only to approximation of the truth -
Your undemanding Love has been the most precious gift
I could ever have asked in life

The place you hold within my heart is special
I value you as a diamond:
a source of unremitting strength in times of need
lending it freely from pressures of your own shaping
and shoring me up against those of my own

A million facets each reflect but an aspect
of the beauty which you brought into my life
and which you are -
reflecting clarity of light into my world
which prisms into rainbows of coloured joy
dancing on my soul.

All this, and more, you mean to me,
for your coming into my life once more
I am profoundly grateful
and am at a loss to express -
the richness of my life now with you
is more than I deserve
and in the radiance of Love I feel towards you
for all you have done, and for being you
the Sun dwindles to but pale illumination
of outer form alone.

You are my Mother, and in that phrase
is imbued a gamut of emotion
which these words fail to say:
but yet, I must include them:

I Love You.

(18/12/96)

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