September 1st 1/9/365

September 1st 1/9/365, a photo by fragglerocks on Flickr.

Freda Parsons, nee Jessop, was born on September 1st 1929 in Huddersfield, Yorkshire. She was a beautiful girl and had a quite lovely singing voice, with which she won talent shows, and she got to perform at the Albert Hall in her teens. Music was always a big part of her life, and though she ended up working as an engineer she also performed, and produced, amateur dramatics and musicals all her life. She had me in 1959 at the age of 30, and I was illegitimate which wasn’t the done thing at all back then. She had had an affair with another engineer, and ended up divorced from her husband (who sounded a bit of a jerk anyway) and brought me up in Nan and Grandads house, though to start with she was sent away to another county to have me – so as not to cause the family shame. She lived in a Hungarian refugee home whilst she had me, and after I was born, her Mum visited, fell in love with me and decided to sod the shame and take her back.
Nan and Grandad both doted on me apparently, but they had both passed away before I reached 6yrs old, and Mum then had to bring me up on her own. She took a job as a school science lab technician, and also studied for a metallurgy degree as well as still doing musicals and singing in working mens clubs on weekend nights to bring some more money in.

When I was 11 she met and married my stepdad, who was in the Royal Air Force, so we left Yorkshire and lived on RAF bases in Lincolnshire and Norfolk, until his 22yrs service was up, when we went to live in Bedfordshire. I finished school there and left home at 17 to go and do nursing, and both Mum and George worked at Cranfield aeronautical college. I went off and had my own life, got married, had Ben, got divorced, and lived 32 miles away, not too far for visits, but not quite close enough for what was to come. On her 60th birthday Mum found out that George had been having an affair with her best friend for over a year, and the resulting fallout was horrendous. George left and went to live with the other woman and Mum was left to fend for herself. She kept herself busy with her work and her amateur dramatics, and had some good friends, especially Pam who she went on holiday to Italy with a couple of times, but mostly she lived alone, and never met anyone else.

She was a fantastic grandma, and because I also worked all hours to keep head above water, I would take Ben up to stay with her at weekends so I could work and she had his company. She absolutely adored him and spoiled him rotten, and they loved each other with a special bond. When she was 71, she was diagnosed with cancer, and died when she was only 73, and Ben was 15. I can’t go into the 2 years we all went through because it was the worst 2 years of our lives, I still can’t think about it in full, the pain it causes never gets any better. Ben is equally affected, and maybe one day we will be able to talk about it, but not so far. I cry just being at the edges of it, so I try to remember the best times of her life, which was when she was with Ben.

She was the best Mum and Gran anyone could hope for, and she would have been 82 today. I wish she had known her Great Grandson Lewis, and also that my life is much turned around. We miss her.

The photo’s are ones I’ve taken through her times with Ben and me, plus the round coloured thing is the last present she ever bought me. When she couldn’t walk anymore, Ben and I would go and visit and take her out in a wheelchair to her favourite garden centre, where we’d have a little lunch in the café there, and on our last outing she bought me this crystal that hangs in a window and when the sun hits it the rays shoot around the room, I think of her when that happens.