IN MEMORY-YVONNE CARR...MY MUM 1945-2003

My mother died suddenly in October 2006 i still find it hard to reconcile that she is no longer here.

Mum was born in Jamacia in 1945, she grew up in a farming community but the main produce was sugar cane, both her parents (my grandmother still living) worked in this field my grandmother had her own buisness as a cook for the men who worked the fields any my grandfather when not working in the fields made and sold ice-cream unfortunately never passed on the recipes however the whole family has a love of ice-cream..LOL.

Growing up during the late forties and fifties was quite austre but our family was better off than most, also in those times the church was the focal point of the community (there was a cousin who was a lay preacher and used to travel around the island giving inpromtu sermons)..but life was much simpler they ate what they grew, foods that were hard to find when they came to England, each of the siblings had a pear tree named after them (Avacado) . Mum and her siblings went away to school and were only home during the holidays, which meant they had to help out on the land. The tales my mum told me especially about the chickens which they had to catch for Sunday dinner, which reminds me when we were little the neighbours kept chickens mum said i used to stand there fascinated by them and could never quite understand that what i saw and what was dished up was one and the same thing.LOL even at that age i was a confirmed city girl.

On November 5 1961aged 16 mum had finally arrived in London by plane which was quite exciting as all of other relatives had made the long journey by boat it had taken my grandmother who came here in 1956 five years to save the fare.

Mum found London exciting and different after all it was the swinging sixties, and found it quite hard to adapt to the new way of life, for instance in Jamacia they lived in a large house with land so it was quite a shock to her to find that she now only lived in two rooms with my gran and her younger sister, she had been well educated and was looking forward to a nursing career and found that in 1960's London this was not possible the only work available was factory work or menial jobs, she got a job at Ponds Cold Cream Factory at £2.00 per week quite a lot of money i'm told, when she hd saved enough she was able to rent her own room in the house that was shared by 3 families. She was always amazed at the lack of space and the brisk pace of life there never seemed time to gather your thoughts everything just kept moving and you right along with it.

I was born in December 1964 the first generation of our family to be born in this country it was a double celebration as mum's younger brother had also arrived from Jamacia aged 16, she would never allow him to take me out as she caught him doing wheeelies with me in the pram.LOL three years and one week later my brither arrived and our family complete. Unfortunately my parents seperated when my brother was still a baby so it was we three against the world.

Times were hard for us during those early years mum got a job as a kichen assistant at our school because it fit in so she was able to take and collect us without having to use child minders and night she went to night school to learn typing and shorthand with a better future in mind for us.

We lived on a council estate at this time a newly built one not like they are now and mum had finally got her office job for a publishing company still close to home and near our schools. Those were difficult days for her working and bringing up two children alone, she always wanted more for herself and for us and money was always tight, mum taught herself to sew as it was cheaper than having to constantly buy clothes for rapidly growing kids, omg that blue gingham dress she made me with the upside down collar but she was so proud that she'd done it this turned into a small buisness for her and soon she was making clothes for neighbours and the younger office girls, this is what kept our heads above water.

That was the thing about mum forever striving upwards, during this time she did a youth training course and wokerd as a youth worker having always been interested in welfare she could never understand a lot of single mothers who it seemed just took benefits a bit unfair however her point was yes life is hard but it's what you make it her motto with us was sink or swim she chose to swim, but i do remember the nights i used to hear her cry when we'd gone to bed.

Also during this time she had joined Gingerbread an association for one parent families and became chairwoman of our local chapter, it was great fun because there were loads of weekly activities and it meant that mum could go out once in a while but the main thing was that children were always welcome a major bone of contention with single parent families.

Finally mum managed to get a job with Brent Council in the housing department dealing with various housing needs she specialised in this moving to work for Hackney Council as Housing manager in charge of some 15.000 properties including sheltered housing units she found the working exhausting and exilerating at the same time and managed to make some real in roads into local housing policy.

Her final post was an housing association in Wandsworth, she put her heart and soul into this and won many awards for the estate and under her leadership and with the residents it became a really nice and safe place to live. Whilst here she was the driving force in creating a community center and spent 2 years raising funds and getting local residents buisnesses to invest in the project, not onlt was it to provide a creche a cafe computer training catering sport facilities for the local teams. Six weeks before the official opening she died suddenly, although she had seen the finshed result and presented the first computing certificates she missed the big day.

The trust kindly named the center after her "The Yvonne Carr Community Center" as she was not there my brother and myself represented her she would have been so proud of us Gordon Brown opened the center and was very complimentry in his speech about mum and her efforts my brother and i had our photos taken with him it was a fabulous day and she would have enjoyed it immensley, she was also awarded a "Civic Award" by the local council, the saddest part that her greatest success to date and she missed it she would have been so cross as she like to finish what she started.

I was so proud of my mum she had achieved so much in her life, her spirit is so strong and she had travelled such a long road and for life to be snatched away like that saddens me as she had so much more to give, and of course i miss her, sometimes i catch little glimpses of her or hear her loud laugh and feel her touch when i need comfort, thats where i draw my strength from.