This is what I read at Mum's funeral:
What can we say about Mum? She was our Mum! Our leader, our sounding board, our friend, our advisor, our confidant. She was the centre of our world, and was a constant throughout our lives. She was our matriarch, and a very, very special woman, and we were blessed to have had a mum like her.
Mum was a provider. Of love, of warmth, of safety. She was the master of knowing just what to do or what to say to make things better. She was a provider of physical things too. Many of you here at some stage will have been the recipient of her culinary skills, and we have all inherited her cooking skills to a greater or lesser extent (some of us to the lesser....). Mum was a fantastic cook of hearty REAL food, and this was why she was so popular while working at the Stringers. if an army marches on its belly, Mum made sure the crews kept marching.
Cooking wasn't the only place Mum excelled though.
We all have vivid memories of Mum's sewing prowess. Any trip to Dunedin or a family outing as a toddler was spent riding in the back of the car in your knickers and singlet while Mum frantically tried to hem your brand new outfit in the front of the car while travelling the pigroot. Even when we grew bigger and the outfits got fancier her time keeping ability never changed, and many a night before school formals was spent staying up into the wee small hours being fitted and refitted while Mum perfected the details. The job always got done though, and we never had a trip to Deka naked. Even once we had grown up and had our own children, any scruffy urchins who arrived at grandma's house with torn pants were dispatched home across the paddock nicely mended,
Mum took real pride in anything she did, and orangapai was her own little patch of paradise. Running Orangapai was often hard work, but she took to it with gusto learning how to tag sheep, drench, foot rot and any other of the hundred little jobs that keep a sheep stud running. While she could have chosen an easier sheep to work with rather than the 100 + KG suffolks that thrived on that country, they were her own, and her flock was a credit to her.
Even around the house Mum was never left incapable. After Dad died she taught herself to use the ride on lawnmower and use the chainsaw, keeping the huge yard tidy and the house looking as spic and span as we always remembered it while growing up. Mum never shied away from hard work, and never complained. When things got tough she just pulled up her socks and got on with it, and it's that sort of resilience that is the greatest legacy she could have left us kids.
If there was anything good to come from Dad dying, it's that it made us all brutally aware of how precious family really is, and all four of us made a more concerted effort to spend more time with Mum, call her more, catch up more. Mum has been the pillar of our family, and was always available for a phone call, coffee or even a heart felt text whenever times got tough. Our children are incredibly lucky to have had such an amazing woman in their lives. She loved them, and they adored their grandma.
We were incredibly blessed to have had someone like Mum in our lives. She an aura about her that made her honest, trust worthy, hard working and a just a good genuine person in a world where good genuine people are getting harder and harder to come by.
We love you Mum, and we'll miss you. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts. For everything.
When I come to the end of the road
And the sun has set for me,
I want no rites in a gloom-filled room,
Why cry for a soul set free!
Miss me a little - but not for long
And not with your head bowed low.
Remember the love that we once shared,
Miss me, but let me go.
For this journey that we all must take
And each must go alone;
It's all a part of the Master's plan
A step on the road to home.
When you are lonely and sick at heart
Go to the friends we know,
And bury your sorrows in doing good deeds.
Miss me, but let me go
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