Vaughan Rowsell

Happy times

January 17, 2011 at 11:41 am In Life, 4 Comments

I have been quiet for a while as I put my head down on my latest work projects. Things are rocketing along and going pretty damn well, but the last 12 months have been anything but a walk in the park.

My mother, my mum, the inspiration for my NZ long bike ride in 2009, passed away in October.  It was unexpected and heartbreaking.  I spent half the year sitting beside her in hospitals, unbeknownst to me at the time, watching her slip away.  The doctors all told us she would be home by Xmas.

Mum was one of these special people who touched so many.  At her funeral people were spilling out the door.  We underestimated just how many people needed to say goodbye to someone very special to them too.

So I had an idea last night looking through old photos, as I am so busy with life and work at the moment, and I am pretty poor at blogging these days, that I should at least take the time now and then to post a happy photo of something from the last few years to share it, and hopefully make someone else happy. That’s the sort of thing that Mum would have liked.

And so, upon reflection about Mum’s passing, and as I started writing this post , I looked at life and the things I might not be so proud of, or might not have made Mum so proud. The one thing that pained Mum, every single time I would walk into her kitchen she would say “When are you going to stop working so hard, you are going to kill yourself you know, you should slow down and enjoy like, smell the flowers…” and so on usually for the next five minutes, and I would nod and say “soon, soon Mum soon”.

Working hard is just what I do for some reason, I can’t help it, and right up until a few minutes ago, as my fingers started tapping the keyboard, as I thought about this post and if I could spare 10 minutes to write this now,  I could hear Mum’s words and see her disappointed glances in her kitchen (which would quickly turn into warm smiles) and I berated myself yet again that I never took the time to slow down for Mum. I should have been more like her, kind giving and always doing things for others as she always did.  But then I realised something. I work hard because that’s exactly what she did.

Mum was a solo parent, raising three boys, in a wheelchair.  She did everything for us, she never stopped.  We were always broke, Mum didn’t have ACC to fall back on, we had to get by on an invalids benefit and she fought for every cent of it to get us kids fed, through school and where possible making sure we never went without. She had super human strength, and she never let her wheelchair stop her.

In the 80′s Mum took out a series of bank loans to buy us a computer. Actually not just one but a Spectrum, a Sega, then a C64, followed by a series of PCs, unheard of at the time, and her friends and neighbours thought she was mad.  Why was this woman on benefit buying crazy expensive computers?  Well us boys lived on them, when we weren’t climbing trees, playing with fireworks, and getting into trouble with the law (ssshh) we were punching in hex games from a magazine, and saving them to cassette.  We were writing programs, dialing up BBS sites till 3am on our 2400 baud modem.  We were dreaming of the possibilities  of what we could do.  We were learning a trade that would see us set up well for the next century.  She worked hard to pay those loans back and to make sure we didn’t miss out.

I don’t slow down because she didn’t. I always push myself because I wanted to make her proud and to show her all her hard work and her investment in us was not wasted. She was proud. You don’t usually learn how proud your parents are until you lose them, going through all her boxes, full of things from your past that she kept as momentos, from report cards, to newspaper clippings, to a lock of hair. She was so proud, she just wanted me to be happy more than anything else.

Even though Mum worked so hard raising us boys, and making sure we had everything, what Mum could do was take the time to smell the roses too. She was always one for a laugh, a glass of wine and lending a hand. I have only just realised that Mum wasn’t telling me to stop.  She was telling me to slow down now and then.

I am not superstitious or overly spiritual but I think Mum is still there somewhere not necessarily ”out there” but more “inside”. I am my mother’s son, and I will work hard to make sure the people I love don’t miss out.  But my girls will be their father’s daughters, and as Mum showed me how to work hard, but find the time to slow down now and then, I need to start learning how I can do the same for my girls, show them how to live a good and happy life.  Work hard for the things and people you love, but find the time to sit back now and then and take it easy.  When they walk into my kitchen in 20 years time, I don’t want to feel like too much of a hypocrite when I berate them for not smelling the roses.

And so, here it is.  One of many happy photos to remind me to smell some roses now and then.