They Will Always Know You

They Will Always Know You is dedicated to my dearly departed mum.

It is a song about the strange permanence of grief: the instinct to reach for the phone when life becomes too much, the memories hidden in familiar smells, recipes and voices, and the painful realisation that someone who shaped your entire world is no longer there to share it with you.

My mum never had the chance to meet the generations that came after her. She never held her great-grandchildren, heard their laughter or sang them to sleep. That is a loss which somehow grows alongside the family she left behind.

But then you see something familiar. Her eyes in a great-granddaughter. Her smile appearing again decades later. And you realise that although they could never meet her, they can still know her.

Through photographs, stories, memories and the love she left in those of us who knew her, I can introduce her to every generation that follows.

Because as long as I can tell her story, they will always know her.

For Rosemary.
1948–2003.