- Catherine Eade has been helping her mother, 72, look for romance online
- She says she knows her late father would not want Virginia to be lonely
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As we watched the sun melt into the horizon, my mother and I reminisced about my father. We put on one of his favourite songs, Old Man by Neil Young, and both of us shed a tear.
Dad had died of cancer six years earlier, at the age of 74, but he remained very much in the forefront of our minds and hearts.
It was the first time that Mum and I had been away together, just the two of us. Perhaps it was the different setting of the Halkidiki peninsula in Greece that made me bold enough to say it.
Love story: Virginia with her late husband David in Brussels in 1995
I looked across at this wonderful woman, still attractive at 72, and said: ‘Sometimes I think you should find someone else, Mum.’
She seemed startled, but I continued: ‘You know?.?.?.?a companion. So you can do things like this. So you’re not alone.’Â
I didn’t push it any further, as her eyes filled with sadness and she looked away, but I was glad I had sown the seed.
Online dating: Virginia Eade, right, with her daughter Catherine, who is helping her mother get dating again by signing her up for singles' websites
There’s no denying that the subject of when â€" or, indeed, if â€" widowed parents should find love again is particularly poignant for their children.
Immediately after losing my father, the very idea of a new man would have felt like usurping him, an insult to his memory.
But gradually it had begun to dawn on me that Mum might be lonely; that she could do with some company.
Perhaps she, too, had been wondering how to broach the subject, loathe to utter her thoughts for fear of what I might think.
The following evening, sitting on our hotel balcony, it was Mum’s turn to speak: ‘You know, I think I am ready to meet someone,’ she confessed, with a tentative smile.
We sat in silence for a while, letting the import of what she had just admitted sink in. I squeezed her hand to let her know I didn’t think badly of her for wanting to move on.
Of course, there was never any suggestion of Mum rushing into anything. She had proved her deep love of my father, David, to the last, caring for him at their Norfolk home right up until his death.
It was typical of Dad that he had lasted eight years longer than his doctors had expected. He was a tenacious man who really didn’t want to leave this planet â€" or, indeed, his beloved wife.
The day before he died, in March 2006, he was drifting in and out of consciousness when he suddenly motioned for my mother to hold his hand. I’ll never forget the look he gave her. He couldn’t speak, but his eyes were filled with so much love that I was reduced to tears.
Throughout my childhood, theirs had been a love story I never tired of hearing. My mother, Virginia, had arrived in London from Ireland at the age of 18 and was training to be a speech therapist when she met David, who was living in the flat above hers.
It made me laugh when she recalled how he’d tried to attract her attention by throwing chocolate biscuits down to her from his window as she lay in the garden studying.
They married in 1962, bought a little semi in Wimbledon, and I was born four years later, followed by my brother, Justin, and sister, Lucy.
We spent much of our childhood in Ireland, as my entrepreneur father had bought a burnt-out toy factory in Dublin, which he transformed into a bistro called Dobbins â€" one of the most successful restaurants in Ireland to this day. He sold his share of it in the Seventies and we moved to England.
When I realised his end was near, I went to their house in Norfolk, leaving my three children at home in Brighton with my husband Neil, while I spent those final precious moments with my father.
I was reading ‘Do not go gentle into that good night’, the wonderful poem by Dylan Thomas, when I heard my mother’s halting voice from downstairs.
‘Catherine, I think he’s?.?.?.?he’s gone,’ she said. It’s a cliché, but I didn’t realise how close I felt to him until he died.
Long romance: Virginia with her husband David, who she met when she moved to London at the age of 18
Unlike me, my mother was extremely brave at the funeral, but in the weeks that followed the extent of her deep loneliness became clear.
I phoned her almost every day, and neither of us was able to talk about Dad without tears. Of course, at this point we could never have imagined someone else stepping into Dad’s place. Photographs of him were all over Mum’s house and his hat was still on the hat stand.
It was five years after his death that I realised Mum might need, even deserve, a companion. On a Sunday walk on Holkham beach, she was chatting to a man when I noticed how animated she looked â€" and how disappointed she seemed when he said he had to go and find his wife.
One day I mentioned this stranger to test her reaction. ‘That lovely man!’ she immediately exclaimed. ‘I wish he hadn’t been married?.?.?.’ Then she changed the subject, but I realised something had shifted . Friends of mine had bereaved parents who had remarried, I reasoned, so why not my mother?
So it didn’t feel like a betrayal that evening on holiday in Greece last summer. I knew my father wouldn’t have seen it like that either. He would never have wanted the love of his life to be lonely.
An incredibly sociable woman, who makes friends everywhere she goes, Virginia wasn’t built to live alone. She teaches pottery and people are so relaxed in her company that they return again and again to her studio for lessons and a chat.
I decided to explore the possibilities. But how to find a man for your 72-year-old mother? Her small town in Norfolk is hardly brimming with eligible bachelors. Internet dating seemed the most likely option, but as my mother had only just managed to master texting, I worried it might be too ambitious.
Then, early this year, my mother bought herself an iPad, proudly announcing she had ‘joined the 21st century’. Soon afterwards, I read about a website called mylovely parent.com, where you can create a profile for your parent and make recommendations of people to date.
I phoned my mother at the end of January and asked if I should sign her up. She said she wanted to think about it, then called back a few days later and agreed to take this step.
As I trawled through 100 or so photographs of men on the website, deep down I knew I was searching for someone who reminded me of Dad. Some of the men looked frankly terrifying, others weak. I realised how protective I felt of Mum.
Protective: Catherine, left, said she realised how worried she was about her mother, right, finding someone suitable as they looked through 100 photos online to find a date
I was on the verge of abandoning the idea when she phoned and asked me to show her how to use the website.
So I started to create a profile. They asked for five words to describe my mother and I wrote: ‘Caring, fun, creative, open-hearted and lovely.’
My introduction read: ‘My lovely mother is a talented potter who is full of life, kind and funny. I think she would love to meet a man as she is very sociable. She likes going to art galleries, classical music concerts, the cinema and walks by the sea.
‘She is still beautiful and does not look her age!’
‘Do you really see me like that?’ Mum asked, her eyes shining.
We logged on to the site, but five minutes later I was tearing my hair out. ‘How do I download the internet?’ my mother asked, then: ‘Have I got enough gagabytes?’
Watching her type with one finger reduced me to a gibbering wreck â€" but we persevered.
After browsing the site myself, I recommended a nice-looking man of 74 with a kind face called Tom, who liked classical music.
When he added Mum to his ‘likes’ and messaged her, we felt rather excited. Before long they were exchanging messages.
When another man tried to make online contact, she let out a little yelp of excitement before deleting him. ‘He looks like an axe murderer,’ she said. ‘And anyway, I only want one man at a time.’
She told me she found the prospect of meeting someone at her age daunting, but within a couple of days she was getting the hang of messaging Tom â€" the man she jokingly referred to as her ‘boyfriend’.
Over the next couple of weeks she kept me updated. She and Tom had apparently swapped email addresses and were corresponding daily. One evening, I grinned as I read a message from Mum.
‘Just one more email tonight to let you know I have a good feeling about this. It’s early days, but I find myself somehow happier than I’ve been for years,’ she wrote.
‘Tom sounds such a nice man. Last night he wished me a “fond farewellâ€. It’s been rather a long time since I’ve had a man who seems to care.
‘Don’t worry, I won’t get too excited. I’m a sensible person on the whole, but perhaps being happy could become a way of life! Love you darling, Mum xxx’
When I contacted my brother and sister to tell them the news, they were just as excited as me. ‘About time,’ said my sister.
Then, one morning, I received an email from her entitled ‘Date!’ in which she excitedly told me that Tom had asked her out. She sounded like a teenager.
‘Tom rang and we are meeting for lunch on Monday! He s ounds nice and seems easy to talk to. I’m excited. My first date for 52 years! What will I wear?’
How times have changed when a mother is asking for dating advice from her daughter.
I suggested smart casual. A frenzy of texts then followed, with my mother suggesting and dismissing various outfits.
‘But how should I be?’ she asked nervously. ‘Just be yourself,’ I advised. ‘You’re lovely. But don’t have more than one glass of wine!’
I was surprised by my own excitement. And perhaps the fact there was no secret upset on Dad’s behalf.
I phoned that evening, dying to know how it had gone. Had she been swept off her feet? Sadly, it seemed not.
‘He was nice, but there was no chemistry,’ Mum said, sounding disappointed. ‘I think I’d built it up so much and felt a bit let down when it was OK, but nothing special.’
She explained that it had felt a little awkward, making conversation with a virtual stranger.
‘I thought about your father, then wondered what I was doing with this “old manâ€,’ she said. ‘I keep forgetting I’m old, too, but I don’t feel more than about 50.’
In fact, she admitted the main reason she’d warmed to Tom was because his photograph had reminded her of Dad â€"yet, in reality, she knew she’d never find anyone like him.
But it is early days. Mum has taken her first faltering step into the world of dating and isn’t deterred. I have some ideas for her quest for love, and my next plan is to send her on a cruise for older single people.
A door has opened into an exciting new phase of Mum’s life, and she is ready to find a loving partner.
Not that my father could ever be replaced: he was far too big a personality for that. But if Mum does find someon e else, I’d like to think the family would accept him.
I suspect, though, that even years down the line, Dad’s hat will still be sitting at that jaunty angle on Mum’s hat stand in the hall.
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