My Mum

Diane Fay Vevers   

December 30, 1941 to March 3, 2002

My Mum was born in 1941 in a small village in England called Astwood Bank.  She was the only child of Alfred George and Frances Ethel.  When she was six or seven the fair came to town and her Dad promised he would take her.  When she came down with measles he promised her he would bring her back whatever she wanted and she asked for a balloon or a doll.  Her Dad brought her back both and whenever I was a little girl I was allowed to play with that same doll when we visited my grandparents, she was still in pristine condition and dressed in clothes my Mum helped sew.  They were humble beginnings for a lady who managed to adapt to any situation with grace, elegance and love.

In her spare time my Mum loved to sew and knit and make jams and plant gardens and restore furniture.  Once she knitted herself a suit, remember that this was the seventies; she later became a great seamstress and whenever I needed or wanted skirts or dresses she would take me to pick out a pattern and material.  Sometimes within hours, always within days I would have the new item I had seen in a magazine.  When my brother and I were about thirteen and six Mum knitted us matching sweaters.  I cringe when I think of those sweaters now because they looked curiously like the one Charlie Brown wore in mustard and brown but at the time we were perfectly happy with the soft yarn and the product of our mother’s love keeping us warm and safe.  When my sons were babies my Mum knitted them wispy blankets and off white sweaters that were beautiful.

When I was seventeen or eighteen and knew I would be leaving home to head to university soon, I was asked to participate in the Mother’s Day service at church.  My Mum did not know about this so she was surprised to see me at the front of church proclaiming to all that would listen how much my Mum meant to me and how I knew that I was only ready for this next leg of my journey because of the wings she had lovingly hand stitched to my shoulders.  We both cried tears of joy and sadness that day.

Three years later I called from college to announce that I was going to Japan.  The line was silent as I explained that I had been given the opportunity by the British Embassy to fly, Business Class no less, to Tokyo for a training course and then onto Okinawa to teach English to high school students.  Her words were prophetic but I did not believe them at the time.  My Mum told me “You’ll never come home” and she was right but she never let the thread that connected us be severed.  We wove our relationship together into a fine tapestry of phone calls and letters and photographs.   At first I spoke no Japanese and sometimes I felt incredibly lonely.  My Mum picked up the phone at any hour and her calming words wrapped around me like the clothes she used to make me with her loving hands. 

After I spent three years and not just one as I had planned in Okinawa, I moved my life to Colorado with the strength of knowing that a safety net embroidered with care would always catch me if I fell.  I slipped and faltered many times and that web of acceptance and faithful support that my Mum spun around me, like the blankets she made with care for my sons, comforted me from afar.  For my beautiful, giving, and gracious Mum, I am horrible with a needle so I offer you my blanket of words that simply say I deeply respect you, I miss you like you wouldn’t believe, and I love you always.