Celebrating Mum

Today should have been my Mum's 63rd Birthday – oddly the age at which she'd have retired – done all those things she told us about, but tragically will now never get to do. It's been 5 and a bit years since she was killed – a span of time in which everything has changed in the lives of her family – perhaps non more so than I.
Over those five years we've seen and heard things no-one should ever have to – we've all had moments of darkness and times when we've not been able to see the way forward – and from time to time for all of us I'm sure that will always be the case. But now each of us have, to differing degrees, found our own ways to move on with our lives. There are still moments when I reach for the phone to make a call that will never be connected – or think “I must tell Mum”...but I've learnt to master that, to shrug my shoulders, grit my teeth, and carry on.

When we buried Mum we put “Remember me with a Smile” on her gravestone – a play on words for a beautiful smiling lady – written at a time when I wasn't sure it could ever be true. Through the last five years, despite being in and out of the Courts with her killer, there have been moments when unbidden an image would come to mind – the Mum I knew from my childhood – the independent lady (we saw from the outside) who came to visit - and occasionally I could think of her and begin to smile again. A couple of years ago we made a pact not to commemorate the day she died – and that for me was a turning point – a moment when I knew that we had a chance of letting the good & positive take hold again, a chance for our wounds, however vivid the scars, to begin to heal.
For so long Mum's name, the thought of her, conversations about her – they were wrapped in upset, anger, horror, guilt...nothing good – to reach a point where we could turn our backs on that – to look past the events of five years ago & see the Mum we should be remembering – the Mum who would tell the world she was proud of me when really she was furious, the Mum who would swear at the Ref when my brother played rugby, the Mum who was so so looking forward to being the best Grandmother in the world – to be able to simply think of Mum & not how she died – not such a bad thing to hope for.

After Mum died good friends took me back to the mountains – my wonderful wife insisted I went – I like to think they all knew me better than I knew myself back then. At first it was the simple exertion – a physical way to empty my mind and escape thoughts and events I'd feared were going to come to define me – but quickly I re-found the peace and tranquillity – both externally and vitally internally, that the mountains bring to me and when I look back now I can see that that was when the long slow process of healing began. In the mountains or on a rock face there's a real chance to be at one with your surroundings, the universe & whatever else you hold dear, there are moments when every ounce of you must focus down to a grain of sand – and others where you can't help but realise just how tiny you really are in the scheme of creation – and in those moments I believe you truly get to know the truth of who you are and can be – for me the mountains offer a chance to see your soul.

In the year after she died we sold our business, moved out of the big fancy house & changed our lives – aware suddenly of the fleeting opportunity that this life is – of the chances lost and those yet to be taken – simply knowing that we wanted to be, and Mum had always wanted us to be, happy. I now spend my days (mostly) wandering & climbing in the mountains – returning home to a house full of paintings & the sound of laughter - I'm grateful for what our lives have become. Even with clients, but especially when I'm on my own, there are moments of solitude and time for reflection – Mum is often with me in the hills – its entirely possible that I chat to her more these days than I ever did as an adult, a connection once severed has been remade and I can find a peace in that.

Mum never really got the subtle differences between rock climbing, fell walking or mountaineering – at least that's what I like to think. There may of course have always been a gentle, loving, even prideful mockery in her greeting “ah, my son the Mountaineer” - but I'd like to think she'd be pleased how I've turned out in the end.

Today should have been my Mum's 63rd birthday – today I climbed a mountain, remembered her. Today I smiled again for the first time in too long.