[susie123]

Lovely tributes from everyone.

My mum died in 1978 when I was almost exactly half her age. I have only recently reached the age at which she died. Yesterday would have been her 98th birthday.

At her funeral there was standing only at the crematorium chapel as so any people came to pay their respects. Although she was a southerner, from Middlesex, she embraced Accrington life and its people embraced her.

She was a lively, outgoing gregarious person who loved parties and dressing up in silly outfits to entertain people. How she ever ended up with my grumpy, cynical dad I'll never know but they were engaged for umpteen years before they married in 1940.

She loved clothes and was always well dressed. She played bridge and was a mainstay of the Mechanics in Accrington. She knew all about wild flowers and loved flower arranging, but wasn't a gardener. Interestingly, I hate cards, love wild flowers but not cut flowers and love gardening.

She worked part time as an insurance collector going to people's houses to collect their weekly premiums and walked miles around Accy, Church and West End every week. On these rounds she would chat to people and do little things like help old ladies put in their hearing aids or cut their toenails and other little kindnesses.

Sadly she was not robust, never ever weighed much more than six stone, didn't eat well and smoked a lot, and died of a heart condition in her early sixties.

Since then I have latched on to a substitute mother figure in most of the places I have lived and made some wonderful friends of elderly ladies in that way. There is no one here in Morecambe to fill that role but my 81 yr old cousin who lives in Accrington is the nearest thing. My mum looked out for her when she came to Accrington as a 16 yr old orphan in the forties and they became very close.

I think I have inherited my dad's cynical grumpiness and I hope some of my mum's lively and outgoing personality. Don't know whether that is a good mix or not! Whatever, I wish she hadn't gone so early and could have been around to know that I had settled down with my partner who I had only just met when she died. She was missed by so many people as well as her family and that I think says it all about her.