Mum's Telly

Today marks nine years since my mother died, so I am sharing a story written around 2020

The sad events of my parent’s deaths brought many problems for my family, a situation echoed with the passing of a certain loss of childhood. With the devastation, not to mention outrage, comes an undeniable indignation equalled only by the immense loss that I as a childless woman feels at the advent of the menopause and beyond. 
It is very much a
‘How did I get here?’
Losing my father, for me came with much anger and a great deal of confusion, that as time passes and wisdom reigns, turns to forgiveness and understanding of a man I feel I hardly knew, hidden beneath decades of unspoken words and silent grief.
My mother on the other hand will always, in my mind seem like that lost girl, raw as silk and delicate as the paper tissue she later relied on.
Her death, like my father’s brought forth a fear and loss that perhaps they had held to themselves throughout their marriage. She wanted a happiness that at times was under her nose and that at others made her want to run a thousand miles to nowhere. She wanted to run, to walk, to get away from the confines and drudgery that married life brought to an unmarried Catholic girl, whose family abandoned her when she became pregnant, her own mother dead from a broken heart, many years before.
Her father remarried, she herself buried in shame, shamed by the church, unable to approach the altar to receive communion, when we were dressed in white, veiled, gloved and ornamented ready to receive the Host for the first time.
As we practised sticking out our tongues in readiness for transubstantiation, she unlike other mothers was unable to take part, on account that my father was married before.
Their life was a struggle and consequently so was that of my siblings and me, forever dealing with their sense of lostness and our own sense of confusion, throughout our lives.
As lives were lived, falling outs between their children lead to loss of contact and an underlying anger that never leaves. No one is to blame, that is just the way it is,
‘There were ten in the bed and the little one said,
Roll Over, Roll Over,
So they all rolled over and one fell out and the little one said
Roll Over, Roll Over,
So they all rolled over and one fell out.
Until there was just the one in the bed and the little one, clutching her hankie said
‘Enough is enough’
When my mother eventually entered the care home, she took with her few possessions, some photos, one of my drawings made when I was 16, a little Christmas tree with decorations and her massive telly.
On the sly she would always tell me that when she was gone that I could have the telly
‘The others have all got someone to get them a telly, you have this one’
In the end, when she died the television came to me, delivered to me by my brother in law. At this point I realised that the remote control did not actually synchronise with the TV and I was never able to tune it in. The brother in law gave it a go, but the mysteries of its workings were never solved for me. So there it remained on the care home special BBC and ITV, Pointless and Under the Hammer.
Shortly after, the grief and loss hit my family
‘Pointless’
Our relationships
‘Under the Hammer’.
Apart from one sister, we siblings no longer have contact, following our parents deaths the ashes of our fidelity were buried within the family plot, on the altar of our combined histories.
The television, stopped working altogether a couple of years ago, when they built the blocks of flats directly behind my house, no signal to be had from the outside world or anywhere else.
Today, upon notice that once again I may be on the move, due to planning permission applications and the general vagaries of being a renter, I decided to say goodbye to the telly and most of all another step in the long farewell to my mum. I stroked it, said goodbye to her and wrote a note to stick onto it
‘THIS TV WORKS, PLEASE BE KIND TO IT, IT WAS MY MUM’S’
My neighbour helped me carry it outside and as he put it on the floor three young people came along, were kind of interested, so I told them that it was my mum’s, they expressed their sympathies, but no thank you, they didn’t need it.
‘I want it though’ came the voice of a middle aged passer-by.
‘I can send it to Ghana, people don’t have televisions in their homes, they will love it’
‘My mum would love it too, how will you get it there?’
‘I am going to pack it up and send it there, I am from Ghana, my name is Eddie, thank you so much’
We had a strange handshaking Covid, should I or not, moment, but we did. I showed him the remote control, taped to the back of the set and off he trotted, ready for the six o’clock news. My mum would have been so happy, knowing that, that telly is going to travel further than she ever did.
Let’s hope they have better luck than I did tuning it in