It doesn’t seem fair that a life well-lived should end in a bunch of forms. Death certificate, green form, last will and testament. Bald facts that come nowhere near encompassing the colour and spark of the person we’ve lost, or the void she leaves behind.
Mum died on Friday. I’ve spent the last few days with Dad, grieving with him as he tries to adjust to the loss. It’s been hard, though, when we feel her everywhere around us. Her jacket is still on the chair, her boots in the hall. Every room in the house feels like she’s just stepped away, and will be back at any second.
Joyce Ferguson
17 June 1934 – 29 November 2024
Today, I helped him make phone calls. Lots of calls, lots of reciting those bald facts. Hearing the same professional sympathies and saying thank you to them over and over and over again, until they’re just noise and we’re wrung out from it. There’s more to come, but those were the most pressing ones. The rest can keep for a bit.
At the end, there should be something more than a hyphen between two dates. There should be space for all that Joyce was to all of us: funny, warm, smart as a whip. In the 1960s she worked as an administrator for the College of Further Education in Newcastle. A young maths teacher applied for a job there; she typed the letter inviting him for an interview. When he arrived, she looked up from her 5ft 2in to his strapping 6ft 3 and asked him if it was cold up there.
I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that he got the job, and she got her guy. They were together for almost sixty years, and he was with her at the last.
I’ll remember her most as Mum, obviously, but she was also a fierce advocate for her family, a wise counsellor, a tireless Writer of Letters. She travelled extensively but always preferred coming home. Loved flowers, but hated bouquets. She was a reader of books and solver of crosswords, tamer of blackbirds and befriender of dogs outside the newsagent. It’s thanks to her that I am the way I am.
Safe travels, Mum. I love you.
