You died as the curtain at the Theatre Royal went down. I was 19 and hanging onto a relationship I thought was my life.  Whilst you clung on by the merest of threads, I clung onto the romanticised ideals of first love. I didn’t understand what being close to death meant.  Across a chasm of teenage indifference, I had rejected all my family stood for. I, with a soupcon of education under my belt, knew so very much more than they could ever understand. The bohemian world of university and urban city culture; so far from the world of the working classes, that stifling square mile of home containing everything from life to death.

If you were here now I’d say I was sorry. That I love you. That I’d never realized how hard you worked; sewing factory sofas by day, cleaning offices by night. That your yearly pilgrimage to the Costa Brava, sneered at by my teenage self, was a life line. A beacon of respite from the daily grind. Just like the 20+ a day you puffed away.

I’d tell you how strong you were as my Mam carved the family apart again and again. It was a different time. Mental illness and drug addiction barely talked about; domestic violence commonplace.  I’d tell you how grateful I am for stepping in; picking up the pieces Every Bloody Time.

You couldn’t have changed what happened. Mam chose her own path.  Trying to change her was like trying to balance on the event horizon.

And I would ask ‘Why? Why did you keep helping her? Why did you let her treat you that way?’  And through the smoke you would say,

‘Because that is what had to be done pet. That is what had to be done.’