A Life Without Edits - Exactly as it is

MARGARETS FINAL YEARS

Margaret’s Final Years (2016–2024)
By 2016 I was already involved in looking after them.
Shopping. Appointments. Practical things. Checking in. Making sure bills were handled and the day-to-day was covered.
It wasn’t announced as care. It became routine.
When her husband died in 2016, that routine intensified.
What had been shared became singular.
I was there more.
Hospital visits increased over the years. Waiting rooms. Follow-up appointments. Medication adjustments. Repeating information to different departments. Lifting. Carrying. Sorting paperwork. Fixing small things around the house.
She aged gradually.
There wasn’t a single turning point. It was incremental. Energy reduced. Walking shortened. Recovery from minor illnesses took longer.
Outings became less frequent, though I pushed for them. I would tell her the fresh air would do her good. Some days she hesitated. Some days she resisted. Most days I persuaded her.
We went to places that had history for us. Cafés we knew. Coastal spots. Familiar streets. There was an unspoken understanding that it might be the last time we did certain things.
We didn’t announce that.
We just went.
Her personality remained intact.
Direct. Observant. Opinionated. Still asking about my life. Still offering commentary whether requested or not.
There were steady days.
There were difficult ones.
Over time I was no longer just visiting. I was organising.
Meals. Cleaning. Coordinating carers when needed. Being the point of contact for medical staff.
The house grew quieter.
By 2024, movement was slower. The radius of her world had narrowed to familiar rooms and set routines. I was part of that structure.
In the last two years, it was no longer shared care.
I was there full-time.
Appointments. Medication. Meals. Nights. Everything ran through me.
When her health declined further, the decision was made (by Margaret, beforehand) to go back to hospice, where she had comfort from the staff she knew well.
The day she died, I was five minutes behind her ambulance.
Five minutes.
When I arrived I was asked to sit in the lounge, it just didn’t feel right, something was up. Margaret had gone into cardiac arrest whilst being put onto the bed.
I had missed it.
I wanted to be there. Not out of fear. Not out of spectacle. I wanted her to know I was there. To hold her hand... I wanted to see her go.
I wanted to close it properly.
Instead, I walked into a room where it had already happened. In silence. Alone.
There was no final exchange.
No last look.
After years of being there for her every need….I was not present for that moment.
I felt numb….It felt unfinished.
It didn’t end the way it should have.
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PUB CHILDHOOD

Pub Childhood
My earliest memory is from around five or six years old.
I was in infant school with my younger sister. I relied on her being there. One day she left for an optician appointment. I noticed she was gone.
I walked out of the school.
I crossed roads and walked the eight minutes home to the pub where I lived. I went inside and hid behind the piano in the lounge bar.
My teacher arrived later and spoke to my gran. I remember hearing them say I should stay home for the day. I had been unsettled when my sister disappeared.
We lived above the pub.
There was always noise going on. Entertainment most nights. Music coming through the floorboards while I lay in bed. Voices, laughter, glasses chinking, the hum of people gathered.
On weekends we were allowed downstairs if we behaved.
Dart teams played and my gran put out food. I remember sitting under the bar counter eating and drinking lemonade. There was an ice bucket shaped like a pineapple on the bar. Customers sometimes left coins tucked into the leaves for us children. We called it the magic pineapple.
BBC2 showed old black and white horror films on weekends. I watched them from the end of the bar sitting on my high stool, with crisps and pop. My mother worried they would give me nightmares. They didn’t. I thank my Grandfather for letting me do that.
An elderly lady called Alice used to come into the lounge bar on a week day. She often brought Golden Delicious apples for us children. I can still remember the taste. Very sweet of her.
There were singers and pianists on entertainment nights. I watched them closely. I wanted to be up there, but I was too young and way too shy to say it.
Those years were loud, busy, and full of people.
I was quiet but inquisitive.
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REINVENTION JOBS

Reinvention Jobs
From around 2010 onward, the work changed.
Professional theatre was no longer the centre.
I stepped into other roles.
Care work. Massage therapy. Animal care. Customer-facing jobs. Call centres. Management positions. Contracts abroad. Seasonal work. Practical employment that paid.
On paper, it looked varied.
In reality, it was movement.
I learned each job properly. I showed up. I did what was required. In some roles I moved into management. Responsibility never bothered me. I can organise. I can lead when needed.
But none of it felt final.
Entertainment remained the true line.
Whenever performance reappeared — even in a different format, even in smaller or adjusted spaces — it felt aligned. The rest felt like holding positions.
I wasn’t failing at these jobs.
I just wasn’t anchored in them.
They filled time. They paid bills. They kept structure in place.
Each new role carried a quiet question underneath it: is this the one?
It never was.
The idea of a larger opportunity remained somewhere ahead. A position that would pull everything together — experience, stage work, leadership, communication.
It hasn’t arrived.
So the pattern has continued.
Take the job. Learn it. Do it well. Move on.
Reinvention became practical rather than transformative.
The thread underneath it all never changed.
Entertainment was the constant.
Everything else was interim.
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THE COMPLAINT I NEVER FILED

THE COMPLAINT I NEVER FILED
I was six months into a provisional cabin crew contract. Training had gone well. I’d flown multiple sectors with different teams and never had an issue. I felt competent. Capable. Part of something.
Then there was one flight.
Four sectors. A whole day with one supervisor.
From the start, something was off. She was cold. Short. Looking down her nose at me. I brushed it off at first. Not everyone clicks.
But then came the public criticism.
In front of other cabin crew she started pointing out things I supposedly wasn’t doing. Things I was doing incorrectly. Small operational details blown up into incompetence. It wasn’t feedback. It was positioning. She sat me down for a “chat” and proceeded to tell me how bad I was at almost everything.
I remember sitting there thinking: this is wrong.
Not emotionally wrong. Factually wrong.
I had done the work. I knew I had. I’d completed loads of other flights without issue. I was a valued member of the team. Her version of events didn’t match reality.
Afterwards I spoke to the other girls on the flight. They hadn’t seen any of what she’d described. They said I was fine. That her claims didn’t stand up.
But it didn’t matter.
She had rank.
A week later I was called in. Full-time contract offered.
I should have been pleased. Proud. It meant I’d passed the provisional period.
Instead, all I could think about was that day.
I declined.
I told them why. I explained what had happened. Nothing came of it. No investigation. No request for evidence. No attempt to retain me.
That was it.
I left without seeing the friends I’d trained with. No final coffee. No proper goodbye. Just a quiet exit.
At the time I felt sad. Disappointed. A bit deflated. Not furious. Just finished.
Looking back now, the part that stays with me isn’t her behaviour.
It’s what I didn’t do.
If that happened today, I would file a formal complaint. I would ask for documented evidence. I would request specifics. Dates. Witnesses. Written feedback. I would make the system work properly.
Back then, I didn’t know how to do that. Or maybe I didn’t believe I could.
So I walked away instead.
One supervisor. One day. Four sectors.
A career path redirected.
Would I have stayed in aviation long-term? I don’t know. Time would have told. But I never got to find out.
That’s the complaint I never fil
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THE NIGHT I MISSED THAT DATE

THE NIGHT I MISSED THE DATE
Ten years since Mammy died.And I didn’t clock it.
That’s the truth.
I’d felt odd all day. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but I wasn’t feeling right.
I went for a drive in the daytime to Llys y Fran. It’s beautiful there. So open and peaceful, even in windy weather. I had a cup of coffee and a Welsh cake. Then home.
I pottered around and did a new song recording. That kept me busy for several hours.
When I went to bed I did the usual scrolling of Facebook Reels. Tried to watch a drama. Couldn’t get into it. Same as how I’d felt all day.
Then I was looking at a family member’s Facebook post.
It had totally got past me that it was Mammy’s anniversary. Ten years.
I broke out in a tearful cry.
I just haven’t been myself for days and I hadn’t been on Facebook much at all. I had missed it. It had just gone past midnight.
I did what I know I can do well.
I found some photos and made an AI video. Me and my sisters as young children. The picture was black and white. In the video we’re alive, waving and blowing kisses back to Mammy in heaven. And Mammy returned the love.
It took me until 4am. I didn’t lie down until 5am. The cats woke me at 8. I was up, eventually, at 10am.
Later I saw my younger sister and my niece had also forgotten and put something up today, so I didn’t feel so bad in the end.
I’ve been blaming it on anxiety and ageing brain cells.
Ten years.
I didn’t forget Mammy.
I missed the date.
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