I noticed the post lady giving the letter a bit of a look.
I knew it was coming but it was still a shock to see Buckingham Palace embossed on the thick, cream envelope.
I still couldn’t quite believe it. Mum and I were off to see the King!
Admittedly, it would be just three days after the Coronation, so I wasn’t entirely expecting Charles to come racing out of the Palace with his arms outstretched, but nonetheless, the very idea of my mother and me even walking through the fabled Palace gates was more than enough to boggle the mind.
So just how DO you get an invite to a Buckingham Palace garden party?
Well, it was nothing to do with me, but much to do with my 76-year-old mother, Sally. And also rather a lot to do with my little brother, Mark, who died, from cot death, aged just three months, in January, 1979.
I was seven then. A proud big sister who loved nothing more than being trusted to give her baby brother a bottle. A little girl who, when he died, must have driven my grieving mother mad with all her questions.
What was wrong with him? One minute he was here, kicking and smiling in his cot. The next he was gone. Why?
Cot death, or unexplained infant death, unfortunately, provided no answers, leaving our family of four, that had so recently been a family of five, staring into a dark tunnel where nobody seemed to laugh any more, where your mum can’t stop crying, your dad, Roly, and your five year old brother, John, wander about looking lost and where all of you are basically on the floor and can’t imagine for a moment that any of you will ever find the strength to get back up.
What I didn’t know then, when I was seven years old, was that exactly how my mother got back up would provide me with a blueprint for coping with whatever difficulties and disasters might arise in my life after that.
Somehow, with the help of friends and family, she continued to be our mother, though myself and John noticed that she had changed. It no longer mattered, for example, if we traipsed mud into the house, broke a valuable object or didn’t tidy up our toys.
“There are more important things,” she would say.
So, she raised a daughter who learned to power on through pain, to care little for material things and to care only about love and the people we love, for as long as they are there.
She went on to have another baby, my brother James, in December the same year, teaching me, though I didn’t know it then, that you can’t give up when something terrible happens because then you will miss out on the wonderful things that will eventually come along.
And she also showed me, when she got in touch with the then Foundation for the Study of Infant deaths, now The Lullaby Trust, first for their support and then later volunteering as a befriender to other parents who had suffered the same unimaginable loss, that the best way to ease your own suffering is to try to help other people to overcome theirs.
Mum has now served on The Lullaby Trust helpline for 38 years and I cannot begin to guess at how many people she has helped, providing a listening ear and, just as she did for me and my brother and father, being living proof that when the very worst thing happens, you can still, somehow, find the strength and resilience to go on.
I am not sure why she chose me to be her companion at the Palace but I will be forever grateful that she did.
I got to share in the joy of walking her through the Palace gates, seeing her chatting away proudly with the delightful Duchess of Gloucester, who showed so much interest in Mum's work and asked such thoughtful questions, as well as seeing Mum sitting proudly, in her beautiful posh hat, eating her neat little sandwiches ‘with the crusts cut off!’ and her dainty piece of Victoria sponge.
Charles and Camilla were not in attendance but we did spot William and Kate and Sophie and Edward in the distance, as well as, thrill of thrills, Mum’s favourite Royal, Princess Anne, who ‘calls a spade a spade’ and was standing behind us in the next group.
We had been told not to try to take any selfies with the Royals - ‘don’t you dare!’, said my mother, with the look she has that still manages to reduce me to toddler size at the age of 52. But I did manage to get her to pose with Princess Anne in the background, the princess looking resplendent in what I imagine Royal watchers would call a lovely lemon two piece.
We also had a wander round the grounds where my mother marvelled at how all the plants were labelled, and imagined, with a slight catch in her voice, how much the Queen must have enjoyed walking there.
The King has made clear, through the Big Help Out, how much he values volunteers, and from my mother’s experience at the garden party, I can but concur.
As any bereaved person will know, when you lose someone you love, it doesn’t matter how long they are on this earth, they continue along with you until your last day comes.
As we climbed into a taxi with the sun which had been fighting the clouds all day still winning the battle, my mother was in a soft haze of happiness.
‘Imagine,’ she said, a little wistfully, ‘that little Mark brought me all the way to Buckingham Palace.’
‘Yes,’ I said. Because every single day I remember that his short little life and my mother’s courage as she faced the loss of it, has quietly carried me to where I am now.
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