Universal Mums

When I lost my mother over a decade ago, Claire would often talk to me about Universal Mums.

My understanding of what she meant — or at least what I took from it — was that mums are mums. That perhaps my own personal loss wasn’t quite the total obliteration I imagined it to be.

And it wasn’t long after my mother died that I bumped into my first Universal Mum.

She lived a few streets from me, at number 14, which was also the house number I grew up in, and the number I most associate with my old dear.

I’d see her passing my house, laden with groceries. Like my own non-driving mother, she had clearly grown used to a slow, waddling walk, arms down by her sides, bags pulling at her hands. Both of them short, stout women with arms seemingly as long as orangutans, loaded with litres of milk and a stone of potatoes. Moving slowly, but with some unstoppable force of consistency.

Unlike my own mad dash around the supermarket trying to avoid eye contact, a chat in the street wasn’t an interruption. It was part of her shopping experience. The neighbour. The half-cousin. The husband’s work colleague’s wife. My mum stayed connected to her community simply by being present to it.

And this Universal Mum was no different.

She’d see me out gardening and stop to chat. We’d talk about the overflowing dog poo bins, and what the village committee and our council tax money were — or were not — doing about it. We’d talk about my young kids and her grown-up ones. I know all about her hip, and the waiting list for the next operation. I know she wasn’t best pleased when her latest dental appointment was moved to a dentist who didn’t work on the ground floor.

She likes to be on the go. Even when she sits, her hands are busy knitting.

And I know that since her husband died, she hears angelic orchestral music playing in her head. At first she was closing windows to try to block it out, thinking it was coming from a neighbour’s radio.

I don’t know what to call that.

But something in me hears it as comfort. As though something, or someone, is letting her know she is seen. That she is not alone. That there is more holding us than we can usually hear.

And perhaps, even more than that, is the smile it brings when she tells me that the doctors “can’t do a bloomin’ thing about it!”