It's Mother's Day in the UK today and I have been summonsed to my mum's house for Sunday lunch.
I love my family and I especially adore my mum, but I have to admit that I'm not particularly looking forward to the day. It's not going to be an easy one, for any of us.
We're still going through that awful first year of unhappy milestones without my Grandmother; this is the first year my mum has to get through Mother's Day without a mother, and as fate would have it yesterday was my Grandmother's birthday, the first one she didn't get to celebrate with us.
My mum's way of coping is to take control, bullying everyone into gathering around her and then force feeding them into oblivion. She'll be enthusiastic and cheerful and she'll expect the same from us ... and there lies the rub. Because it's not always easy to force yourself into a cheerful frame of mind when you desperately miss someone who was the hub of the family and who's absence has left a gaping hole that no amount of roast beef and yorkshire puddings is ever going to fill. My grandad will be there, in body at least, silent, sitting staring back into the past, his pain filling the rest of us with a gloom that is hard to shake. Nope, I'm not looking forward to it one little bit.
But ...
It is Mother's Day and I am a loving, dutiful daughter and I want my mum to have as nice a day as possible. She refused my offer to cook dinner, like I said, that's something she needs to do this year to get her through the day, and she'll be too busy taking care of everyone else to be fussed over and pampered. So I will go for lunch, I will grit my teeth, plaster a winning smile on my face and be cheerful, I will try to engage my Grandad in conversation and distract him from his loss, I will be charming and chatty and lead by example.
That will be my gift to her. That's all she really wants this year.
That and a big bunch of flowers, of course.
I wanted to share one of my Grandmother's favourite songs, not easy to choose as there are so many good ones, she loved amongst others Sinatra and Nat King Cole, Doris Day and Louis Armstrong ... I remember watching my grandparents dance in the kitchen one Sunday morning to his version of La Vie En Rose, I think I must have been about 7 at the time, and thinking it was the most wonderful, romantic thing I'd ever seen ... I still do actually, so that's the one I'll choose.
Here it is, I hope you enjoy it ...
