Mum makes me breakfast early most Sundays then goes to church, there to pray for my soul and other lost causes. And dad’s, who departed their wee Giffnock bungalow for Philipshill cemetery, via a place for the terminally forgetful, nine years ago.
She misses him, still.
Late Saturday mum pinged me, asking me to stop for bread. l brought chewy rolls for scrambled egg and made breakfast, because mum tweaked her back Saturday morning and hadn’t got to the shops. With hair half done at the front door she looked her age (84). Jean Wardrop’s never looked her age, so l said I was driving her to the Pineapple for 10 o’clock mass.
Mum refused, of course. I’m fine, she said, wincing and wobbling. Despite her protests we two took mum’s Sunday spot, first driving round Eaglesham and swinging past the council semi five Wardrop’s grew up in.
That meant more time for mum’s stories, for the McEachens are great storytellers. I found dad’s overtime was not taken into account for a mortgage so they couldn’t buy anywhere. It was the dumb luck of having three kids in a shade over two years and a doctor Cruikshank’s clever letter that landed us in 6 Brownmuir Ave.
(Lucky, lucky, lucky. They bought it in the 1970s for 4.2k thanks to Maggie Thatcher.)
On the road to Clarkston we spoke of the new Saint Joseph’s, opened in 1971. l served on the altar in that ceremony and the view from the pew hasn’t much changed. The tabernacle is still strikingly modern in blue and copper against white walls, the altar servers (boys and girls) scruffier.
That ceremony was a big deal and packed with the great and the good, I thought, as we waited for our mini-feast to start. l reminded mum that, unlike today, the church was similarly stacked for dad’s funeral. She said, with some pride, that the altar was busy too, with the bishop and three other celebrants.
(Maybe the quartet of priests were because dad, ever the entrepreneur, was a late convert. There won’t be so many at mum’s wake, as she’s outlived them all.)
I have long known how much l owe my parents, but after dad’s Requiem Mass- in the car park, at the cemetery and over soup and sandwiches in the Eglinton Arms- I found there are many others indebted to Jean and Hugh Wardrop.
I’ve not yet written a piece about mum like this one but let her know on Sunday mornings she’s a true matriarch and was dad’s inspiration. She saved him. Dad was a hard man to reach but mum cut through and could always make him laugh; my dad loved her, listened to her, moved mountains for her.
“Get to know your parents, you never know when they’ll be gone for good.” Baz Luhrmann.
I’ve a feeling Sunday breakfast in Giffnock is toast and 10 o’clock mass will become a thing, to be followed by brunch and a chat.
That’s fine.
The jury’s out on God, but l believe in mum.
Russell Wardrop
CEO