Had a phone call from DIL at half past midnight to say that my mother has died. She (my mother) stopped speaking to me some years ago, heaven knows why, I ran myself ragged looking after things when my stepfather was ill and after he died.
I tried to find out what the problem was, but phone calls resulted in her hanging up on me, an unexpected encounter in Waitrose was unbelievably awful, made me wish I had just stayed hiding behind the yoghurt section instead of approaching her.
Now of course I will never be able to sort things out.
I was so proud of her, she was an unmarried mother in 1958, in a small community. She was sent away for the birth, I was supposed to be adopted, but she decided to keep me, despite my having a cleft palate and being difficult to feed.
Perhaps one day I will try to tell the whole story, or at least as much of it as I know, but for now I must admit to feeling somewhat out of kilter, hence still being up at 4am.