The manner of my mother’s death was one that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. It was hard to watch her go and it was a terrible, evil disease that took her.

Her death changed me. My husband noticed almost immediately that I had changed, but he didn't know the reason why I changed. He probably thought I was devastated. I was devastated at first, but that wasn't the whole story.

The reality is I felt relief after she had gone. And then I felt incredibly guilty for feeling relieved. The relief wasn't just that her suffering had ended. Of course I didn't want her to suffer. But the real relief was that the person who I had been trying to gain acceptance from, for all those years, no longer needed me to conform to her image of what I should be.

My mother was a nineteen-fifties wife. That’s not to say she was a wife in the fifties, just that she modelled herself on that kind of wife. She stayed at home, took care of the kids and the house, cooked the meals, did the cleaning, washing, all of that. From my perspective, she never really had a life of her own. She never had outside interests that I saw. She sacrificed herself to the “housewife” life and allowed her husband to go out and earn the money. She was caring and attentive when I was a child, and she liked nothing better than to spoil her kids and her husband at Christmas and on birthdays. She always overspent at Christmas and the sheer number of gifts she purchased for me and my brother was overwhelming and embarrassing. We weren't rich. But she controlled the money that my dad earned (he allowed her to do that so he didn't have to worry about anything except his trip to the pub on a Friday night) and she managed to save enough every year to spend a fortune on our presents.

She liked shopping - a lot. I hated (and still hate) shopping. She loved cooking. I don’t like cooking and I'm a hopeless cook. She would have loved for me to follow in her footsteps. But at fourteen I spoiled that for her. And, apart from the times I tried to talk to her about it - and almost always failed - she never wanted to discuss it again.

But my mother was very good at conveying her thoughts and opinions with just a look. I received enough disapproving stares to last more than a lifetime. And while she never said anything openly, within earshot of others - about the fact that I didn't invite her to come with me to buy my wedding dress, about the fact that I didn't want children, about her dislike of the first boyfriend I took home to meet her, about a myriad other things - she said things to me in private and she threw the dirty looks my way often enough that I felt plenty of guilt at going against her wishes. And I regularly found myself trying to make it up to her, or defending her when others didn't agree with her - which was often. She was stubborn and opinionated. And so am I. I seem to have inherited those traits. She was also old fashioned in her views and closed-minded.

But on the surface, she loved me. She adored my brother, and equally adored my nephew; my brother’s son. Of course, she was never going to receive any grandchildren from me.

My father was more distant when we were kids. My father was out of the house a lot because he worked long hours - he left for work early and came home late. He allowed himself one or two evenings each week to visit the pub with his friends and handed the rest of his earnings over to my mother to manage. When he wasn't at the pub, he sat in front of the television until he fell asleep. The only occasions I remember spending quality time with my dad were spent watching football and science fiction on television. The only connection I really made with my father was through the shared love of football. We support different teams but I believe he appreciated (and still appreciates) that I can hold my own in a real discussion about football. My brother isn't really interested in football.

My father is kind of lost without my mother. Ironically, I appear to have found myself again. Now that my mother’s no longer around, the only things I can talk to my dad about are her or football. And that’s sad.

So yes, I have changed. It has caused a lot of friction between me and my husband over the last couple of years, unfortunately. I wish it hadn't, but it is what it is.