It was my mother’s birthday on Wednesday August 13. She would have been 81 had she not, well, gone and died in 2022. Old people. Jeez. No staying power.
My mother was christened Mary Bernadette Doherty, which is perhaps why she did not give any of her three boys middle names. I never heard her called Bernadette by anyone in her family. I suspect she didn’t much like the name. My dad was William Patrick McCallum, or Billy to everyone apart from his kids and my mum when she wasn’t speaking to him, which was often.
Three boys: Kevin, Brian and Barry. We looked alike the three of us and there were times when if one of us was playing up and she wasn’t sure who it was she would shout: “KevinBrianBarry!” as a catchall. For years, the joke goes, I thought my name was “Jesus Christ Kevin.” Boom. Boom. I’m here all week.
My mother lived a good, strong life. It was a hard life. She grew up on a farm outside Kircubbin in County Down, Northern Ireland, one of eight children. She would sometimes tell stories of how there was one bicycle in the family and they would ride to school in relays. One riding for half a mile and then stopping as the other sister walked the half mile and then took her turn.
My grandfather was a hard man, by all accounts. I never met him. He was a hard-drinking man who abandoned his family and headed to England apparently. No-one ever talked much about him. To be frank, I didn’t know his name and the last time I heard talk of him was when he died.
My mother was dead a long time before she died. Dementia robbed her of that strong mind, leaving her bedridden and in frail care for the best part of two years. She would ask me if Barry was still working and why Brian hadn’t been around to visit. She also told me she thought my dad was drinking again, which would have been a miracle as he had been dead for 12 years.
But for dementia and the dying thing she would have been watching Spurs play PSG in the Super Cup last night. She chose the team because Brian’s friend, Hilton, was a Spurs fan and she treated him as part of the family. My mum loved sport, adored cricket in particular.
It was, as was for many, the 1992 Cricket World Cup that made her fall in love with cricket. We watched most of the games at home and for the semifinal against England had a full house of Brian’s friends who had been out on the razzle. When we lost, the 22 runs needed from one ball, my mother came into the TV room in tears. She had been watching in her bedroom.
She loved the Wanderers. She, Brian and I would get tickets for all the internationals: India in 1992, the West Indies, Australia, England. We sat on all sides of the ground: on the wooden stands on the east side, the wooden benches where the open grass embankment is now, the wooden stand before it was replaced by the Memorial Stand. When Australia came to town in 1994, my mother was an enthusiastic sledger of Shane Warne and Merv Hughes.
My mum was dead proud that her son was a sportswriter, though she would often call me up to tell me to stop writing “bad things” about one of her favourites. Conrad Jantjes, the Springbok, was another favourite. After she died, Jantjes told me if he didn’t have money to buy food from the tuck shop at school she would sort him out. That was my mum.
At the launch of my cricket trivia book at the Wanderers, I introduced her to Jonty Rhodes, Ali Bacher, Clive Eksteen and Steven Jack. Her opening words to each were: “Oh, I know you.”
If she were still around, my mother would have called me this week to ask what channel the T20s in Australia were on and what time the Springboks were playing on Saturday. I’d tell her, then have to call back to talk her through changing the channel on the telly. Sport was my mum’s happy place. I miss her today.
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