In Loving Memory of

Our Story

Our mum loved nothing more than chatting at the front gate with neighbours — something she had done since we were children. In spring 2023, she asked if my husband could reinstall the handrail in the garden after a few near-misses with falling. "I put it down to the Crocs she loved wearing thinking they were too cluncy"

In August 2023, we were on a family holiday in Portugal. Our mum didn't have much of an appetite — nothing new, we thought, as she was never a big eater. But from August to October, she started to experience severe headaches. We put it down to migraines, which she was prone to.

Then, in October 2023, as we were driving back from our holiday in Manchester, she sent a few text messages that didn't quite make sense. We assumed she was rushing or distracted. That night, around 11 p.m., my brother called. Our mum had been taken to the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. Initially suspected to be a stroke, further scans revealed the devastating truth: she had two brain tumours.

She had also been complaining about ear pain and issues with her knee, but after years of routine blood tests with no red flags, we never expected this. We hoped — desperately — that the tumours might be benign, or at least operable. But it was Glioblastoma — an aggressive Grade 4 brain cancer. Within just six months, at the age of 62, it took her from us.

At first, our mum underwent six weeks of daily radiotherapy at Edinburgh's Western General, with plans to continue chemotherapy afterward. Sadly, due to a delayed reaction to the radiotherapy, chemo was no longer an option. In January 2024, she was admitted to the hospital, where she spent the next eight weeks under their care.

True to her generous spirit, even in her hospital bed, our mum was thinking of others. She asked each of us, her children, to go out and buy gifts for the nurses on the ward — and she became particularly fixated on teddy bears. We bought 15 "Brian the Bears" to start with, but they disappeared within days. She kept asking for more — not just for the nurses, but also for her roommates, the porters, the man on the hospital radio, and anyone else who passed by her bed.

It became a beautiful, if unexpected, obsession — until it all made sense during the eulogy, when our gran reminded us that our mum's very first job was in a bear-making factory. In those final weeks, without realising it, she had been brought full circle — returning, in spirit, to where her story began.