A Legacy of Love


Josephine Alice Griffiths was a fine, loving and talented person. She was born during the second world war in Rowley Regis in the West Midlands. The third child and only daughter of Albert and Harriet Beddows. Her brothers Reg and Howard were many years older than her. Albert Beddows was a former blacksmith but later helped his sister to run the newsagent and a chip shop which Mummy helped with as a child. My grandfather valued education; he and my grandmother were exceptionally proud of my mother and they were right to be so. She was very bright and an exceptionally interesting person to spend time with. She could speak with intelligence and wisdom on a wide variety of subjects. She was incredibly well read in history, current affairs and English literature. Her interests were not however confined to arts subjects: she loved maths and puzzles. She was also interested in natural history and took a delight in identifying wild flowers and plants, animals and birds.
My mother passed her eleven plus and studied at the local grammar school where she won numerous school prizes. She completed school a year early and started teaching in one of the local primary schools. It was in one of those schools that she met my father, Ray Griffiths. My mother taught for a few years before going to university; the first in her family ever to do so. She studied law at Sheffield university, one of only a few women students in her year, and graduated with honours. After graduation she returned to teaching: she was a natural educator and was very good at it. After my father was recruited to work at the teacher training department in the new polytechnic in Nottingham they married and moved to Nottinghamshire together. 
My parents lived in Nottinghamshire all their married life of over 53 years and the overwhelming majority of that time was spent in Chilwell. My parents were a incredible team and a loving couple. They were inseparable, they looked after each other well and had so much fun together. 
My mother continued to teach in primary schools in Nottinghamshire until Clare was born, after which she ceased her paid employment but continued to teach our family. Edwin was born two years later followed by me. She and my father created a musical home filled with books on many different subjects. They stimulated our minds in other ways with thoughtful trips out and visits to the theatre. Mummy taught and encouraged all of us in our schoolwork. She was very patient with us and always creative. She fostered our curiosity and boosted our confidence. If we had to stay up late to finish work she would keep us company. She read our work and helped us with our revision. She also contributed to the education of her grandchildren: James, Natasha, Rebecca and Edward. She read to them, wrote simple books to encourage them to read and produced word and maths puzzle books for them. 
Our childhoods were not however dominated by work. My mother loved celebrating and a normal year in our family was punctuated with feast days. Our birthdays had different themes every year determined by our interests. Years later my siblings and I encountered school friends who attended the birthday parties she arranged and recalled them in detail. It was so much work, often she would stay up late finishing her preparations, but the results were amazing. She made us all feel so special.
My mother was a very creative person. Her freehand pictures in water colours, pencils or felt tip pens were beautiful. She wrote illustrated letters to us. She embraced new technology and even created pictures for her letters that she drew on the computer. She made beautiful clothes for us throughout our childhoods and, later, also for her grandchildren. She was an accomplished knitter, worked in crochet, cross stitch, embroidery, tapestry and experimented with lace. Even the patches she placed on clothes were incredible works of art: I remember hedgehogs placed on the knees on a pair of hard worn trousers belonging to Edwin. Mummy brought to these handicraft projects her formidable intelligence adapting patterns to make them more personal to us.  The house and the garden that she created with my father reflect their skills and imagination and is decorated with some of the beautiful things she created.
My mother was very courageous. There are many examples: she was brave enough to give birth to us all at home in Chilwell because she knew how difficult it would have been for our family to cope if she had a stay in hospital. My mother learned how to drive in her forties and was a very good driver frequently driving up to see her parents in the West Midlands. She took things in her stride and refused to be intimidated by people because of their position, celebrity or qualifications. 
I have no doubt of the love that my mother had for all of our family. She welcomed Edwin’s wife Zoe and my husband Ken into that family. She was an exceptionally beautiful, generous, caring and demonstrative person. She told us frequently how much she loved us and showed her love in so many ways. We were enveloped with all the love and care that she sewed or cooked into the thoughtful and beautiful presents she gave and made for us. She created numerous handcrafted cards for the events of our lives and those of her grandchildren. All the exquisitely decorated cakes that she cooked for us are preserved in the numerous photographs that she took that recorded all of our lives together.
Clare, Edwin and I now all live away from Nottingham but my mother kept our family close together by taking a real interest in all of our lives and keeping in touch with us with frequent visits, telephone calls, emails and Facetime calls. Both my parents attended the concerts and sporting events that we appeared in and attended many of those of their grandchildren. Mummy was very perceptive and she was such an attentive listener. She held all of our family history in her memory and recalled it accurately. 
Mummy died on 10 January 2021 following a stroke. I face-timed her on the morning before she had her stroke. She was as alert as ever. She and my father were planning to go out to see the Christmas decorations in the local area. I proposed that we have a Facetime Christmas concert for the whole family and she liked the idea and appeared to be looking forward to it. She was happy, but then Mummy was very often happy with the smallest things. The shock of her illness and passing has left all of us feeling bereft. She surrounded us with happiness and with love. We were all so fortunate to have such an exceptional and wonderful person in our lives.