Fan Comment

Somebody Else’s Mum's Just Died

“Mary Williams has died”, my ma said.

This was Gary’s mum.

I’d seen Gary once in the last twenty-five years or more. It was in a pub, that no longer exists, before and after an Everton game, on a sunny day as I recall.

Gary and I grew up in the same neighbourhood of Kirkby.

Apart from growing up in the same neighbourhood we were connected by both being Evertonians.

As a kid, I remember his dad Stan being a big Evertonian, like a lot of dads of a certain age in the town I grew up in. I remember Stan running down our walk screaming that Everton had just beaten Liverpool. I was happy about this but felt sorry for my dad, a big Liverpool fan. I don’t know why I cared because my dad could take care of himself and Everton were clearly now the underdogs in our city, and this was forty years ago or so. Our crown had now slipped and was possibly irreplaceable, even to this young mind.

Gary was one school year older than me and I always thought he shouldn’t have grown up in our town because he was different – he wasn’t rough around the edges. He was a nice kid.

In Kirkby, the new town, we were always looking to emulate our peers and our rough town – we were Kirkby kids, the city of Liverpool’s overspill, the home of John Conteh and loads of “dead hard” families from Scottie and Greatie.

Gary WAS different, he was a nice kid. There weren't any rough edges around him and he was polite and a nice guy.

We nicknamed him “Gaygos” because he was a nice kid and different from us, above us, better than us, not trying to pretend he was hard like us. And the thing was we weren’t hard at all, just cheeky, and he wasn’t gay either, not that that mattered even back then.

If Gary had been born in a different town, a different city, who knows what would have become of him. Who knows if we would have had a connection, whether that be both of us being growing up in Kirkby or both of us being Evertonians.

As for Mary, I don’t really have too many memories about her. If you asked me about her, I would say she was a good woman.

When my mum told me that Mary had died of cancer, it had no real affect on me. I hadn’t lived in the neighbourhood for nearly twenty-five years or so. I hadn’t lived in Merseyside for about fifteen years. Mary was just Gary’s mum and nothing more than a name and a face from my childhood, and like Gary my long ago passed. That was that.

And then a day or two after the funeral, I called my mum and we talked about this and that like we always do, and then my mum mentioned the funeral and how nice and simple it was. Less than an hour later I felt like crying my eyes out for Mary, and Gary and his dad Stan, and I didn’t know why.

Was it because it was just my past flickering away from me, a remnant from my happy childhood? Or was it because I felt Gary’s pain, the pain I would surely feel one day when my own mother drifts from this plane? Or was it just because I am human and I feel, and feel human pain and suffering? Was it just because Gary and I were both welded together and blues brothers?

I didn’t know, but I knew I was unhappy on this summer’s day. The sun still shone, time moved on, the past was the past and all that was left was feelings of sadness.

I just had to talk about this.

God bless you, Mary Williams, and Gary and Stan too.

I’m left thinking, is there more than something simple that binds us or is blue blood thicker than water?

RIP every mum, every colour and every persuasion.

Up the Toffees

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