Mum, and Dad

My mum and dad were married for 33 years. This pic is possibly just before or just after they married I guess.

I'm going for before, as it's in Ashton-u-Lyne...says on the back. Dad came from Mossley Road, and mum Mansfield Street, but she was from the wrong part of town apparently...so the story goes. Her own granddad had been the Mayor but that didn't count for much.

After they married they fled to Rochdale, maybe they were getting away from either side of that town, and just wanted some peace, maybe it was their teaching jobs that took them there.

Anyway, my sister gave me this pic back in Oct on a family get together in the Lakes. It's several worlds away, but I like her coat.

Today marks her passing, 11 hours after dad. 33 years married, 11 hours apart, has a kind of mathematical symmetry which dad would have liked. He was the maths teacher after all.

No, there was no car crash, no accident, nothing like that, they both had terminal illnesses. At the same time.

Mum in their last days was more ill than dad, who was frail and wasting away, but she stuck around for him. Him at home, her in the hospital. When we told her he had gone, she knew she could too. So the morning after the night before she did.

A joint funeral with hundreds of people in the church where he was organist and she ran the Sunday school was a great goodbye.

I can't believe it is 20 years, where has the time gone. Miss you both.