This week, every year, is always a sad one for me.
It’s when I say to myself ‘if only’.
It would have been my mum’s birthday on May 1, and May 7 is when I lost her.
Hilda May Price had so many qualities, she was just a real mum who put her child above everything.
All her life she desperately wanted children, and was devastated when she was told she couldn’t. That’s why she and my dad went down the adoption route, and got me.
I have always known I was adopted.
She always used to say to me “Remember, you are very special, you were chosen, not just delivered by the stork”.
In fact, she told me a great story – she had some spare money so wanted to buy a fur coat.
She went to the shop in Liverpool, next door to a baby shop, with me crying in the window.
Hilda decided to buy the baby, instead of the coat.
Every time I was naughty, she would say to me: “I should have bought that fur coat!”
With this terrible pandemic, I have wondered how she would have coped.
Knowing what she had been through during her lifetime, she probably would have found that wartime mentality that so many of you will remember.
You just got on with it.
This last year, we have all lost so many loved ones, and it hurts like hell.
What makes it worse is many never got to say goodbye.
Mum passed away in 1977 and it is still painful.
People say it gets easier with time, but it doesn’t, you just find other ways of coping with it.
I have spoken about my favourite walk in my column before, when I go to my mum’s old shop, which is now a house, leave my car and take a walk down memory lane.
This gets me through some very sad times.
You also have to remember the happy times. That also helps.
Mum was a shy lady who wasn’t worldly at all. How she coped with me, I will never know.
I remember buying her a mink jacket, and taking her to the French restaurant in the Adelphi Hotel.
The waiter asked to take her jacket - she replied: “Thank you but no, my son has just bought this for me - I am fine.”
She had dinner and left the coat on for the whole meal.
The sweat was pouring off her... it did make me laugh.
Another thing I will never forget was her face when I became a disc jockey, working at the Cabin Club on Wood Street.
I had been at catering college for three years and passed all my exams. I then worked as a chef on the ships, in London, and finished up at the Cabin.
One night the band took a break, and I said to the owners: “You should play records.”
In those days, people didn’t dance to records, it was merely a fill-in for silences between the band playing.
Long story short - I started playing records in between cooking, and it really took off. They then offered me a job. A chance not to smell of chips any more.
Can you imagine mum’s face when I told her what I was going to be doing?
She asked: “What is the job?”
I replied: “You put records on.”
She cried: “All that time learning your craft, and now you’re giving it up?”
I am delighted to say I never looked back.
My darkest time with my mum was discovering my sexuality. She really couldn’t cope.
Looking back, I understand, as she was from a different generation, plus, at the time, it was a criminal offence to be a homosexual.
She tried to live with it, but I know it hurt her.
Plus, in a selfish way, it meant she would never have grandchildren.
I am sitting in my lounge, writing my column, looking at my home and wondering where I would have finished up if she hadn’t taken me from the orphanage.
I will never forget the opportunities she has given me.
If you still have your mum, look after her and enjoy every moment with that magical lady.
Hilda May Price, I miss you more than words can say.
