Reblogged from Tangental:

Regular readers will recognise the heading. Last year I decided to pull together a memoir of my time with my mother, post dad. I’ve now finished it and it’s in for editing. This post, like so many, comes with a request. Are there readers out there, memoir writers or others, who’d like to beta read for me? I would be very grateful if there were. Of course, as with all such requests if you want a similar help from me you’ll only have to ask. It’s not a long book but one that will be precious to me. To help you on your way, I’ve set out the introduction to give you a flavour. Many thanks in advance.

I have many memories of my parents, always together, well apart from the walks I undertook with Dad. And then he was gone and we had to cope with an absence; more to the point I had to cope with Mum. I was forty-nine and she… she wouldn’t want me to tell you.

If you had asked me up to that point to describe Mum it would have been clichéd: kind, funny, dutiful, family-orientated. But it would have lacked real depth, without nuance. Too black and white. With Dad, it would have been different. I knew him well, his many facets and foibles by the time he died.

What I didn’t realise – I don’t think either of us did – was that I was – maybe we were – about to undertake yet another education, with the specialist subject being my Mother.

Continue reading at Tangental