An Obituary For My Living Mother

My Mum is amazing, and I have things I want to say about her, and I want to say them now. People wait too long to say these things and only good things can come from sharing pleasant thoughts about people. Im a firm believer that I don't share your love for someone at their funeral, I'll share it in every birthday card I give them and I'll interrupt conversations to just flat out tell them. So, once again, I'm saying what I want to say now, and here.

We all live the human experience. We're all always learning. We all develop the same quantity of knowledge over time. Its just the matter of how we recognise and value that knowledge. Someone with severe disabilities is still learning just as much, they're just learning how to work in their own bodies in a world that doesn't teach them. You get put in their body, you'd take years to become as talented as them without the knowledge they've developed.

At my Nanna and Taid's (welsh grandparent)'s funerals, my mother gave talks. Both each to the same tune of "my parents didn't do anything massively recognised or that changed the world, but they cared for their own, and that was massive". Or in a similar vein "they werent the most skilled at anything in particular, but they were handy, cared for us, repaired our cars and dedicated themselves to raising us".

People talk about this in a weird way, like, its deserving of recognition, but we have to cede that there are greater people.

Nah

We all develop our knowledge as we go and my mum is an expert. All mothers are. The act of raising a child is an insane one, it destroys your life for years and leaves it permanently altered for the rest. You must leave it with such a different view on the world. I've met so many mothers, especially in admin roles at tech companies, who undervalue themselves because they're surrounded by people posturing and permanently communicating like they're giving a TedTalk. They say things like "its so exciting to be surrounded by such intelligent people" and "I wish I could be half as clever as the rest of you". WHAT!! NO!!!! I want to grab them by the shoulders and say "What! You dedicated a quarter of your life minimum to helping raise others!! You've seen and supported them as they've gone through god knows what, whilst going through god knows what yourself! You have 200x the social and practical skills than any of them! You're so god damn cool!! Value yourself!!! You're amazing!!"

My mum has just as much expertise and skill as any engineer, professor or politician. We just don't value what she's put her expertise into.

Mother knows best for sure, there's so many times in my life she's given me advice, I've ignored it then later gone "ah, shit, mum was right". And she's still there to help me despite it.

Stop valuing tech barons, politicians and engineers. Value my mum, someone who's:

• Started a local scouting explorers group, which she still helps run to this day
• Started and maintained a local childrens choir for 4 years
• Honest emotional support and advice throughout mine and my siblings struggles as-well as my transition, something she was unsure of but chose to trust me on
• Sole responsibility for her parents care during their ageing, their deaths and their funerals
• My dads struggles and career changes
• Worked part time jobs to keep our lives full of smaller fun things
• Worked with kids for most of her life
• Can play any tune she heard just by ear

We are all the best at living our lives and we need to start realising and respecting that.

Even if this isn't true, the usefulness of an idea doesn't always correlate to its truth.