What My Mum Taught Me

My mum died a few days ago.

She was 98 years old.

She passed peacefully, surrounded by the love of her family, and although the loss is still very raw, there is also an enormous sense of gratitude. Ninety-eight years is a remarkable life.

After I shared the news, I wrote something quite simple on Facebook:

“I’m thankful for everything she taught me.”

Since then, I’ve been thinking about that sentence.

What exactly did she teach me?

And the more I think about it, the more I realise that the answer is much bigger than baking, sewing, music or any of the practical things she taught me as a child.

My mum and dad belonged to a very different generation.

They were children in the 1930s, and before they had really had a chance to grow up, the Second World War arrived.

There was rationing, bombing, evacuation and uncertainty. Fathers went away into military service, and families didn’t know whether they would come home.

Both my mum and dad each lost a parent at a relatively early age.

My mum went to work in a cotton mill when she was just fourteen.

My dad spent two years doing his military service from 1947, including time here in Germany.

When they married, they didn’t have much.

There was no running hot water.

There wasn’t even an inside toilet.

And rationing was still part of everyday life in the 1950s.

By today’s standards, it sounds almost unimaginable.

And yet they raised a family.

And somehow, despite everything they had experienced, they gave us everything they could.

Not everything in the sense of material wealth. They couldn’t do that.

They gave us something much more valuable.

They taught us how to live.

My mum taught me how to bake, sew and knit. She taught me a love for music.

My dad taught me how to repair a car, decorate and paint a house, growing vegetables, fishing, how to lay bricks and deal with practical problems.

Between them, they gave us an education that didn’t come from a classroom.

They taught us to be capable.

If something was broken, you tried to fix it.

If something needed doing, you learned how to do it.

If you didn’t know how something worked, you found out.

And perhaps that last one stayed with me more than I realised.

As a child, I was fascinated by the world.

I wondered about the stars and planets.

I wanted to know how magnets worked.

I was fascinated by what you could see through a microscope.

I wondered about God and read the Bible.

I wanted to know how things worked, where we came from, and what it all meant.

Looking back, I realise that my parents didn’t just teach me things.

They taught me to be curious.

They gave me a sense of wonder.

And I don’t think I’ve ever really lost that.

I’m still asking questions.

I’m still fascinated by how things work.

I’m still learning.

Perhaps that’s one of the greatest gifts a parent can give a child — not simply knowledge, but the desire to keep discovering.

There is something else I’ve been thinking about.

My parents had experienced enormous hardship.

They had known scarcity, uncertainty and loss.

But they didn’t pass that hardship on to us.

They didn’t say, “We had a difficult life, so you must have one too.”

Instead, they took what life had taught them and used it to prepare us for our own lives.

My dad taught us resilience and discipline.

My mum taught us kindness and creativity.

Together, they taught us independence and practical competence.

And they showed us that even when life is difficult, there is still room for music, creativity, curiosity, laughter and love.

That seems extraordinary to me now.

They had grown up in a world where simply getting through the day could be difficult.

Yet they taught their children to look up at the stars.

I think there is something rather beautiful about that.

Perhaps that is why I’ve spent so much of my own life teaching.

I’ve created things, developed courses and taught people from many different parts of the world.

I’ve always had this feeling that if you’ve learned something useful, you should pass it on.

And perhaps that didn’t start with me at all.

Perhaps it started with my mum and dad.

They learned things because life required them to.

Then they taught those things to us.

And I have spent much of my life doing the same.

You learn.

You use what you’ve learned.

And then you pass it on.

That’s how something survives.

And perhaps that’s what happens when someone we love dies.

We don’t lose everything they gave us.

Some of it has already become part of who we are.

My mum isn’t here to teach me anything new now.

But I can still bake something she taught me to bake.

I can still listen to music she introduced me to.

I can still remember her hands working with wool and thread.

I can still hear the lessons she gave me.

And, perhaps most importantly, I can recognise some of her in the way I treat other people.

Her kindness.

Her gentleness.

Her instinct to help.

Those things don’t disappear simply because the person who taught them to us is no longer here.

They continue through us.

And that has made me think differently about what we leave behind.

We tend to think of a legacy as something grand.

A business.

A house.

Money.

An invention.

An achievement.

But perhaps the most important things we leave behind never have our names written on them.

A child who knows how to make something.

Someone who learned to be kind.

Someone who isn’t afraid to ask questions.

Someone who knows how to fix something when it breaks.

Someone who looks at the night sky and wonders.

Someone who teaches another person something they once learned from you.

Those things travel.

They move from one generation to another.

And eventually, you may not even remember where they began.

My mum died at 98.

She lived through a war, rationing, hardship, loss and enormous changes in the world.

She saw a world go from cotton mills and ration books to computers, mobile phones, the internet and artificial intelligence.

She lived long enough to see things that the fourteen-year-old girl who went to work in that cotton mill could never have imagined.

And now she has gone.

But she hasn’t really left everything behind.

Some of her is still here.

In me.

In my family.

In the things she taught us.

In the things we have taught others.

And perhaps that is what I meant when I wrote:

“I’m thankful for everything she taught me.”

I’m thankful for the practical things.

I’m thankful for the music.

I’m thankful for the kindness.

I’m thankful for the discipline.

I’m thankful for the curiosity.

I’m thankful for the sense of wonder.

And I’m thankful that, despite the hardships she experienced, she helped create a childhood in which I could look at the stars and wonder about the universe.

She taught me more than she ever realised.

And perhaps now, the best way I can thank her is to keep passing some of it on.

Keep learning.

Keep wondering.

Keep helping.

Keep teaching.

Keep making things.

Keep asking why.

And, above all, keep being kind.

Because perhaps that is how we keep the people we love alive.

Not by refusing to let them go.

But by carrying the best of what they gave us into the lives of others.

Mum - and dad - thank you.

For everything.