Mo

One of the wonderful things that comes with age can be the longevity of friendships.

During a life one has friendships that can last a lifetime or be brief but deep during the brevity. Sometimes siblings can be friends as well as relations.  Friendships come in all shapes and sizes.

My longest friendship dates from when we were four years old. My second longest would be with my brother who was born when I was 5 but, obviously, the friendship would have come later than that. My third longest started when I was 16 and Mo was 17. This is about that friendship.

How do you condense nearly 60 years of friendship into a few paragraphs?

Our extensive correspondence goes back only half a century to Mo’s first letter of January 8th, 1968 but our friendship goes back to 1961 when we joined Liverpool Corporation’s Town Clerk’s Department as Junior Clerks.

We formed an immediate alliance and became inseparable work-friends.

We went to University together to read Public Administration. We had day release from the Corporation. Whilst other students went off carousing and doing what students do we went back to work. I had acquired ‘The Hypogryph’ (a Vespa scooter) and we went up to Uni on it and travelled between lectures on it. I think it was the first time I’d ever had a girl put her hands around me and hug me so tightly (even if it was simply to stop her falling off!).

Mo would have become the first senior female officer in the Department - of that there is no doubt.

However The Fates decided otherwise and she gave up a very promising career for love and Canada (and left the promotion door wide open for me).

We were never boyfriend/girlfriend (as relationships were referred to then) but even so it came as a jolt when she married in 1965.

However our friendship survived and, in a strange way, when I married 5 years later, our friendship grew stronger despite the fact that we were living on different continents.

Mo had two passions: her daughters and travel.

Over the last 30 years years Mo and I have shared some of Mo’s passion for travel. Mo was the perfect travelling companion. She showed me a lot of Ontario including Tobermory (we never did get to Scotland’s Tobermory) with skirmishes into the US. We toured in Europe and the UK.

For a decade until recently I lived half the year in New Zealand and Mo and her elder daughter, Fiona, who lives in Australia visited me on several occasions and I visited them in Australia.

However, I think that the two most outstanding recent family occasions in my memory were her 60th and 70th birthdays. The former was at the Little Inn in Bayfield in Ontario and Mo had no idea that Fiona and I would be there. 

Mo’s 70th celebration was a small and absolutely wonderful occasion. Mo rented a villa in Tuscany. Mo, Diane and I set off in The Nighthawk from Diane’s in England and drove through France, Switzerland and Northern Italy until we arrived in what was to be a couple of weeks in heaven with Fiona, Heather and Jefferey (Mo's younger daughter and her husband).  I blogged about the trip starting in August 2012 here.

Mo’s last visit to me was last December. The last trip we made together was to Harris. I think that we had arrived at a time in our lives and relationship when two people are completely comfortable with each other.

Just over 5 weeks ago Mo had a massive stroke leaving her with her cognitive functions but little ability to move any part of her body. Thanks to modern technology and her daughters I was able to talk to her several times by video link before she died peacefully. One of my greatest sadnesses is that, for medical reasons, I couldn't be there in person.

The celebration of her life was held today. I added my thanks for her life.

Mo, you have provided me with a lifetime of friendship and memories.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Wherever you are, be happy.