Sunday Digression: The Great Mystery

Just a little digression on a Sunday…

Last weekend, I took the long drive south from Newcastle with my boys and visited my Granny near Southampton.

She had a stroke recently but, thankfully, has made an almost complete and miraculous recovery.

Her recovery is all the more poignant for us as she has now outlived her elder daughter, my mother, by more than thirteen years.

Like so many in modern times, my Mum was brought down by the Big C, passing on to The Great Mystery at the ripe old age of 42 (I was 24 at the time).

She used to love walking along the shore at Warsash where the River Hamble meets Southampton Water, a spot where we were to eventually scatter her ashes.

I hadn’t been there for a while, so I suggested to Granny that we take a wander along there together.

As the sun set and the tide slipped away, I remembered Mum telling me that, when she was a young girl, she used to look across to the gargantuan Fawley Oil Refinery on the far shore and think it was America.

It’s a sadness for me that my boys didn’t know my Mum. Callum was two when she died and Jude wasn’t yet born.

Still, it was lovely to know that we were all walking together along a path she had trodden herself on many an occasion…