Mum and Dad’s wedding flickr photo by NomadWarMachine shared under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license
The first of August was always a red letter day in our family. On 1st August 1959 my mum and dad got married. The date is engraved upon my memory – and this year it was very hard because I had nobody to send a card to, nobody to phone and wish a happy anniversary. I messaged my siblings the day before to ask who had photos of the wedding as I couldn’t find mine, and Lucy scanned a few for me. My Aunty Belinda doesn’t like herself in this picture, and I always thought that Aunty Jenny – my godmother – looks like Alice when she grew too much in this shot, and I wonder where Aunty Marjorie was as she’s not in the picture at all. Mum and Dad probably told me before, too late to ask them now.

Mum and Dad’s wedding flickr photo by NomadWarMachine shared under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license

They look so young, and so happy here. They were happy – it was a good marriage. Dad loved to tell me the story of how he met my mum at University, and mum once told me that the happiest time of her life was when the four of her children were very young and she stayed home to look after us. I don’t think she was ever really happy after he died – dad made us all promise that we’d look after her and I hope we did enough. As each year passed and they celebrated, dad would joke that he’d have got less time for murder – my dad liked his jokes so much that he used them over and over again. One of the things that amused him greatly towards the end of his life was when I’d say his jokes before he did. It amused me, too.

Mum and Dad’s wedding flickr photo by NomadWarMachine shared under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license

Mum hated getting old, and she hated being alone. Now she’s gone I find myself remembering her where I think she was happiest – in the house we built in the Peak District, surrounded by her family, pottering around the garden or lying in the sun with a book. I miss them both.