There’s been a lot going on in my life, and in turn I felt hat these things had largely killed off my writing mojo, meaning that whenever I even tried to put fingers to keyboard (since pen to paper doesn’t really happen these days), I doubted that I was writing anything worth reading… and more to the point, that you guys would actually enjoy reading too.
So I'm going to give you an idea of what's been going on that stunted my writing abilities; although I’m not going to go into everything in detail, as I’d be writing for days, and you’d be reading for an equally long time too.
Over the last few years, I’ve obviously been through the breakup of my long term relationship (I wrote about that previously), which I guess is where my writing started to suffer; but then adding things like house moves, being messed around by people I’ve grown to care about who ended up letting me down, and a sexual assault that happened a couple of years ago have added to the 'problem'... and those things in themselves would usually suffice as an explanation.
However, I guess the thing that has affected my desire, and ability to write the most, is the unexpected, sudden and traumatic death of my mum; the most important person in my life.
My mum was a beautiful, amazing, caring, strong, inspiring and unintentionally hilarious woman, and I adored her with every part of my being... she was my everything; and so losing her at the relatively young age of 69 when she had not had any immediately life threatening illnesses, or diseases leading up to her death was probably the hardest thing I have ever had to go through, and that’s really saying something as I’ve been through a lot of horrific experiences in my life.
I’ve always found it enjoyable to write, and have always been able to inject humour and light-hearted, jokey comments in anything I produce… and so whilst I’ve been wondering what the point in most things is, I found it hard to muster up the fun and excitement to write about anything I’d usually write about on here.
That being said, I still have the passion, excitement and love for everything involved, which is why I’m sat here in bed, at 2.45am writing this. Inspiration struck, and I thought it would be a good way to find my mojo if I wrote about something I have massively felt in my heart, which is what allowed me to write my mum’s eulogy whilst I was still reeling from losing her; her eulogy is the last thing I actually managed to write – and I’m going to include that below, because I think it allows you to learn just a very small amount about why she meant so much to me.
I think writing from the heart like this feels easier as it doesn’t really require me to find and inject the fun factor, or humour that I usually include, but didn’t seem to be able to produce at any point of previous attempts to write. It’s also allowed me the chance to explain where I’ve been, so it’s a 2 birds 1 stone kinda thing for me. So, hopefully this is the start of my mojo, and inspiration returning.
P.S, I've changed. :-) Went blonde, got fillers and that. More about that very soon. X
Mum’s Eulogy
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| The collage I made to be framed for her funeral. |
“Usually, words are my thing… although seemingly not when it comes to this; writing words that mean so much to me, my mum. who I miss so much already. This is honestly the last thing I thought I’d have to write; at least so soon, and so suddenly… which also makes it the hardest thing I’ve ever had to find the words for.
My mum was the most amazing person I have ever known. She wasn’t perfect, for instance with her seemingly selective hearing, which often made for amusing attempts at her trying to convince me that she had actually listened to what I had said, but without being able to reply, nor repeat back to me what I had said… but she wasn’t far off being perfect in my eyes.
Her sense of humour was lavatorial, and that’s putting it politely. Even on her last day with us, she was able to enjoy a laugh and joke, and at her own expense too. Although telling her a joke wasn’t always as straight forward as you might expect; from telling jokes and getting the polite acknowledgement laugh, followed a few minutes later by the belly laugh, signalling the moment that she actually understood, and ‘got’ the joke, to explaining the joke and her still not getting it.
It was like the ongoing onomatopoeia joke that resurfaced every Christmas without fail., as I could not get her to understand what onomatopoeia meant, despite many attempts to explain it simply – in fact the only time she proclaimed to maybe know what it meant, she told me it was ‘a word that sounds like bronchitis’. She was convinced that if she found a dictionary from the 50’s, ‘that word would not be in it’ and only truly believed me that it was a real word when Sally from Coronation Street said it in an episode last year.
We had many, many laughs at my mum’s expense over the years, something she was completely fine about, luckily. Some of my favourites include telling her that they’d taken gullible out of the dictionary, to which she was absolutely disgusted, exclaiming ‘well that’s just stupid, how can they take a word and say it doesn’t mean anything any more?!’ and even when I tried to explain it was a joke, by asking her what gullible meant, she replied ‘well nothing any more, not now they’ve taken it out of the dictionary’, and in a similar way when I told her that if you said gullible really slowly, it sounded like you were saying orange. I had her repeating it for 5 or 10 minutes, desperately trying to get it to sound like orange and not even clicking on when I kept asking her what gullible meant – her reply being ‘that you’ll believe anything’ as she’d accepted that it was still in the dictionary after the previous joke, but that was swiftly followed ‘but I just can’t get it to sound like orange’.
We loved Christmas with mum, there was never a dull moment; be that from her bursting out in song at the only part of each song she actually knew, or thought she knew the words to, bragging about being able to take her tablets with a glass of Baileys and then promptly throwing them back up… or her joining in with some reindeer racing, having picked the computer chair, complete with wheels to sit on at the dining table, before falling off it – cue an awkward silence from us all, waiting to see if she was ok, before bursting out laughing after she herself did.
And the fact that you could actually tell mum exactly what you’d got her for Christmas, even on Christmas Eve, and it would still be a surprise to her when she actually opened them. I’m still not sure if that was her memory failing, or the selective hearing at work though.
In recent years, whilst in possession of a smart phone, she discovered YouTube and funny animal videos, often finding herself stuck for hours wetting herself (probably quite literally) laughing at them. I introduced her to the world of Facebook, which she never truly used (or knew how to), or even understood, but could work her way around enough to see the plethora of animal videos I shared to her wall. I loved her watching them whilst she was with me, seeing her laugh so much, and hearing that wicked, dirty laugh of hers was half of the enjoyment for me.
Her other favourite pastime on her phone was googling line dancing steps. I remember her first few Google searches were so very polite, asking ‘could you tell me the steps to <whichever dance it was> please’. She spent much of her life suffering with arthritis, yet even when she could barely walk, she’d still go off line dancing, even if she could only supervise and direct people how to do the correct steps.
I remember giving her a computer, so she could do some card making on it, and the only time I believe she ever tried to use it, she told me it was broken. So I went to have a look at it, turned it on and there was nothing at all wrong with it. She asked what I’d done, I told her I’d switched it on and then asked what she had done. She had only switched the screen on. When I asked what she thought that big box was, her reply was ‘I don’t know, just a box’ - she was very special, needs.
She loved charity shop shopping, snapping up all the clothes that took her fancy, despite the fact that she only really got dressed 2, or maybe 3 times a week. She loved owning nice things, to the point that they’d get put into a ‘safe place’ and promptly forgotten about, or saved for best… but there was never quite a ‘best’ enough time for her to make use of most of them.
She was a total magpie, always weighed down in her favourite jewellery in a multitude of colours and styles. In fact, she wore earrings to the point that you could see through the bottom piercing, and happily accepted me taking the micky out of her ‘baggy ears’.
She was a very independent lady, and didn’t really like a fuss… which unfortunately is partly why we are all meeting here like this today. She lived life to the fullest of her capabilities, never really complained, and was surrounded by people who adored her; so whilst we all feel her life has been cut too short, I’m sure she’d have chosen this life than a longer, but less fulfilled one.
I just can’t believe I’m never going to see, speak to or hear her again. You were my absolute world, mum. I love you so much, always will… and I will never forget you.
If love could have saved her, she would have lived forever.”
This post originated at www.thebeautyscoop.co.uk