Just a few ramblings on some thoughts this week, being the anniversay of the death of Mammy.

I usually like Springtime but with all that's going on it's been a tough week. As well as the fact that it is a year since the first lockdown and the memories that brings back, two of my friends lost their Mother this week. In fact one of them died on the same date as Mammy. I watched both funerals on line, unable to support my friends or give them a hug.

I have always found it a particularly hard week with it being so close to Mothers Day. It is never the same when you don't have your own Mam to share it with. And this will also be the first Mother's Day for Martin without his Mam who died in January. He wasn't able to go to see her last year because of bloody Covid.

Last year we had a family 'Zoom' Easter dinner. It was about four weeks into lockdown and we were all still trying to be positive. It's hard to believe that it is Easter again and we are still so restricted. I don't think I'd have the motivation to do it this year so I have been doing a bit of reminiscing about previous Easters.

Daffodils always remind me of Mam and of Easter. She wasn't so fond of Christmas but she loved Easter. For her it heralded the start of Spring and the start of the long evenings. She always bought those little yellow fluffy chickens and would have them around the house in plant pots etc. I have also bought them every year. I got some just yesterday in fact.

When the first daffodils arrived in the shops she wouldn't want them if they had been 'forced'. She would always wait for the real thing to appear in Springtime. The year that she died I noticed some daffodils for sale in a local flower shop on Christmas Eve and thought how horrified she would have been to see that.

She loved to see them popping up in her little yard. And when herself and Dad used to come to visit us at the weekends she enjoyed seeing the rows of daffodils that lined the motorway. Every year I watch them appear in our own garden and she always comes to mind. I was quite horrified when the wind attacked them earlier in the week and left most of them lying on the ground. A sign of how I was feeling maybe!

We always went to Rathgar for our dinner on Easter Sunday. As I said it was a big event for her. I remember one year (presume it was my first married Easter) that I brought her over a big Easter Egg. When I gave it to her she started crying. She said that it was the first Easter egg she had ever gotten.

Hard to believe but I suppose the 'commercialization' of Easter was only really starting then. Not like now when every shop seems to be crammed with eggs months in advance. In fact our local Supermarket stocks them on Christmas Eve. A bit of a running joke but wearing a bit thin now.

We got 'An' Easter egg back in the day. If you were lucky you might have gotten one from an Aunt or neighbour but it was usually just the one. I remember one year getting one that was shaped like a cardboard clock and had 12 little eggs, one for each hour. They were only about the size of a cream egg but I remember boasting proudly to anyone who would listen that I had gotten 12 eggs that year.

I remember another Easter when Alan and Brian were very small, for some reason Mam hadn't bought eggs for them. We went to Rathmines on the Saturday morning and tried everywhere but there wasn't an egg to be gotten. She ended up buying two drums in the Bamba. I don't know if Jen was too pleased about that.

Even though they weren't particularly religious, Lent was taken quite seriously by Mam and Dad as was the case with most people. It would always involve the ashes on Ash Wednesday, the stations of the Cross on Good Friday etc. Back then of course nowhere opened on Good Friday. People wouldn't have dreamt of having a drink in the house like they might do now.

Daddy ususally took the day to do some wall papering as he couldn't go to Murphys. I often wonder if he thought of it as some sort of penance.  I have memories of him standing on a ladder, with a sweeping brush trying to get the wall paper to stick to the high ceiling but it invariably would keep falling down and land on his head. His humour wouldn't be great needless to say.

And another Good Friday when Vera came home with big lollipops, I think they were called Kojak lollipops and the sight of him sittting at the fire with the lollipop in his mouth for what seemed like hours was very amusing to us. Not much of a replacement for his usual Fiday night pints.

In later years we were lucky to spend Easter in Greece a few times, where it is a big celebration and taken very seriously. Large gatherings all sitting together out on the Veranda, with the full size lamb roasting on the spit on the roadway. It always turned into a party with singing and dancing into the small hours. We had great times and we will have them again hopefully.

I admired an 'Easter' tablecloth that my sister Vera had on the table and she took it off the table and gave it to me.

A red cloth decorated all over with little chickens and eggs. It wouldn't have been possible to get something like that in Ireland back then as Easter wasn't the big event it was in Greece. I still have the tablecloth. And despite my reservations it will come out at Easter and make its annual appearance along with the fluffy chickens and the vases of Daffodils for Mam.