There's a new star in heaven tonight

There's a new star in heaven tonight. I call her Pamela. She was the only mother that I really knew. 

I first would have become aware of my mum to be, Pamela, at the tender age of 2 when I was a mere toddler, feeling absolutely bewildered and frightened in a large dormitory full of other children in a similar situation as myself.

You see, it's fair to say that I didn't have the easiest start to life. I was the fourth child born out of a family of six siblings. It turns out that my biological mother was not mentally well back then. Had she been assessed by health professionals and given a mental health diagnosis, it maybe would have been schizophrenia or borderline psychosis. I am sure she cared for me to best of her ability in that squalid prefab house in the Old Swan area of Liverpool; a house almost devoid of any furniture. But in the end, her mental health meant that she was no longer able to take care of me.

When I got sickly and developed pneumonia, I was taken to Alder Hey Hospital, at the insistence of my relatives. It is no exaggeration to say that I was close to death. It was at that point that my biological mother decided she wanted nothing more to do with me and I was abandoned and left there. This would have been a hugely traumatic experience for me as a young child, and one which has certainly been a significant impact on my life even now.

I ended up in the care system before being finally placed in the children's home Strawberry Field, immortalised in the classic Beatles song. It was run by the Salvation Army and back in those days, it was managed by a certain Captain Botting: a young man my parents didn’t seem to take a particular shine to, and who, according to them, was actually planning to have me adopted by one of his relatives. His sister maybe?

It wasn't long before I was visited by a certain family who were looking to adopt their third child. No doubt I would have been wondering who these strange people were. But out of all the children at the home, they chose me. Maybe it was because I had the cheekiest grin? Or maybe it was because I had that look of sadness and confusion that you would only see on someone who had been callously rejected by their primary care giver? Only my parents know for sure. 

For the first time in my life I was going to someone that wanted me. I didn't realise how very privileged and lucky I was at the time, but I was about to be rescued from an inadequate care system and placed with a fully functional and caring, loving family. This is how I became the latest addition to the Hunt household just before my 3rd birthday.

Pam to me was the only mother I had ever known, as my mind had erased whatever bad memories I had experienced before. There is no doubt that she had her work cut out. I was a very broken child, just like many coming from the care system in those days. I remember mum telling me how I would shy away from any affection, and I never liked being hugged by her.

Yes indeed, it must have been an uphill struggle for my mum, but against all the odds, she pulled off a miracle and slowly but surely, managed to gain my trust again. 

I grew up to become a happier child than the version of me I left behind at Strawberry Field. By the time I was 18, I was school prefect and in the top class in my year. Throughout all those turbulent years, both my mum and dad gave me a lot of support and encouragement to pursue my extra-curricular interests and hobbies; the main one being music. 

Mum most likely brought me up in the style of parenting she herself had experienced when she was a little girl, which is typical for people born in the post war baby boom generation. That is to say, strict and with an inculcated respect for one's elders and for those in authority. Sure, I felt very resentful at the time. But looking back over the years, and seeing some of the millennial generation today; the products of over permissive parenting who seem to be blessed with both a keen sense of entitlement and intolerance towards anything disagreeable to them, I feel a lot more well rounded in my upbringing.

Mum was a Methodist but she did not practise her religion and was happy for my dad to bring us up in the Catholic faith. I learnt the traditional values of family, fraternity, and kindness to the poor through the lens of the Catholic faith.  These are the same values that have remained with me all throughout my life. My values have never changed. But the world itself has drastically changed around me.

Looking back now at how my mum was with me, I realise she had classic traits of the authoritarian parent combined with elements of narcissism. For instance, she was always very thin-skinned and overly sensitive. She would always remind me about how much she did for me, and if she asked me to do something, it had to be done immediately and without question. She was volatile and could fly off into a rage very quickly.  When I was very young and would wait for her to come home in the early afternoon during the school holidays and prepare my lunch, I remember anxiously waiting for her car to pull up outside, as I never knew what sort of mood she would be in. When she was in a good mood, she would be pleasant and smiling. However, if she was in a bad mood, I was terrified that the slightest misdemeanor might provoke her further, and was often looking around to see if the house was untidy or anything out of place, because I knew that the slightest thing could set her off.

My mum was often bossy and controlling, and whenever I went out, she would always want to know where I was going and who I was going with. She would be quite manipulative at times too. She would make me feel like an ungrateful brat by reminding me of all the things she had done for me as a parent, like feed me, change my bed, tidy my room, take me out to places etc, and she would even compare me negatively to my brother Mark, telling me just how much better he had been when he had been my age. 

I remember this one time after I had left home and was in my first year of university when I had been invited to the wedding of my brother’s sister-in-law. Because at the time, there had been some argument between my brother’s wife Andrea and my mum (this consequently extended to the whole of Andrea’s family), my mum forbad me from going. I could not decline the wedding invitation because I had already RSVP’d, and my place had been confirmed. I decided to go anyway and just not tell my mum that I was planning to disobey her. I don't think she ever found out.

Whatever my mum’s faults were, I realise that this is just how she was. I'm in no doubt she did her utmost to give me the best upbringing she could, and I have to let go of the negative memories, hold fast to the good ones and forgive her shortcomings. She is in the afterlife now and hopefully reunited with her parents, Harold and Rose Bradburn, her Aunty Eunice and Uncle Jack, Aunty Ethel and all the other dearly departed members on her side of the family.

My mum had been having memory issues for a little while, but I only became aware of them myself the afternoon of 21st April 2019 after we had gone to have lunch at some pub in Darlington for Easter Sunday.

Not long after that, towards December 2019 I think, she was finally diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Her decline was slow but progressive, but she did have moments where she completely lost her memory (thankfully I never experienced those moments personally). The last time I saw her alive was Saturday 19th September. It was the day on which my car decided to break down on the A1(M) eastbound as I was on the approach to Scotch Corner. When I finally got to my mum and dad’s, my sister was there playing my mum music from the 1950s: Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee and Dean Martin. My mum was enjoying herself and swaying to the rhythm in her chair. The music must have been taking her back to her earlier days.

By late November, Pam had suddenly deteriorated and was not taking nutrition well. One morning, she was unresponsive in bed and dad called the ambulance out. She was taken to a respite care home in the centre of Darlington. Not long afterwards, she had a fall and had to go to hospital for a brief spell before finally returning to the home. She seemed to get better for a while, but all of a sudden, her condition suddenly deteriorated.

On Sunday 6th December, my sister rang me as I was walking home after Sunday mass. She was with my mum at her bedside and asked me if I wanted to speak to her. As I talked to my mum, I could hear how laboured and heavy her breathing was and knew she was in a serious condition. My sister called later on and said that mum was gravely ill and that she (my sister) was trying to get her moved into the hospice where she worked so I could visit her. Before I could even think about making plans to come up, she rang back a short while later to say mum had passed away. I sobbed and cried like my heart would break.

My mum’s funeral was held on this morning of Monday 21st December at St. Augustine’s RC church in Darlington. I played the organ music that accompanied the coffin into church and then out again afterwards. It was the winter solstice and not only that, but it had been reported in the news that that evening, the planets Saturn and Jupiter would be in alignment in the night sky; the first time they had been this close to each other for 800 years. Some were saying that this Great Conjunction was the Star of Bethlehem or the Christmas star that appeared to the magi as they set forth on their journey to find the Christ child Jesus. I imagined that this star was my mum ascending to the spiritual world above, to take her place among the celestial beings inhabiting the firmament. 

I take great comfort in the fact that my mum's spirit is now looking benignly down on me from above and that she will be always at my side when I need her, accompanying me on life’s journey through the good times and the bad. When the road gets tough and hard to follow, I know she will not abandon me or allow me to stumble.

Maybe you didn’t always treat me the way you should have done mum, and maybe I didn't always treat you like I should have done either, but I want you to know that I have forgiven you all your shortcomings as you forgave mine. I look forward to meeting you again one day in the future.

With love,

Peter