Laundered fabrics, colours vibrant are draped on hangers waiting to be packed away. A white tissue, smudged with lipstick, found in a skirt pocket, once scrunched into a tight ball now lies at my feet. Empty clothes racks glint. Dense woollen piles lie on the bed where her warm fingers had once touched and selected. In variegated tiers, blouses press down onto one and other in drawers where she’d placed them.

‘I won’t be away for long,’ she’d said that Monday. I looked across at her, smiled, and she seemed to catch my uncertainty. ‘When I get back, we’ll book that weekend away in Tenby. Your father and I had our honeymoon there.’

‘So what will you take?’ I remember asking.

‘For the weekend break?’ I shook my head. ‘Oh, the hospital.’ And listing the items on her fingers, she’d told me, ‘Two nighties. Those nice ones you got me for Mother’s Day.’ I’d bought her flowers and chocolates. My sister-in-law had given Mum the nighties, but I didn’t argue. ‘Underwear. A book, my glasses, toothbrush, toothpaste and soap. Towels of course.’ Then her hand took hold of mine. ‘If there’s anything else I need, I’ll be sure to call you.’ She’d paused before adding, ‘Could you keep the house aired for me?’

I recall wandering about my childhood home while she was in hospital. Opening the windows to let in the aroma of new mown grass and the scent of honey suckle. I recall how empty the house had felt. Sort of hollow. I prayed that day. Prayed that we’d have that weekend away in Tenby. Now I can smell her as I press my face into her paisley scarf and breathe in the scent of Blue Grass; a perfume my mother wore daily.

‘Don’t be frightened,’ she’d said stroking the back of my hand and, as she spoke, I read her own fear. I hugged her and kissed the top of her head that smelt of fruity shampoo and, as I remember, sunlight catches a silvery strand of her hair nestled within the scarf.

‘I’ve booked that hotel in Tenby, Mum,’ I whisper into her scarf and as tears sting, I think I can hear my mother’s quiet voice in reply. Or is it the summer breeze playing among leaves in the Bay Tree outside the open window?

I sit still, listening, needing to catch her words. Then rising, start packing away all her clothes, but I’ll hold onto the love letters, tucked away in a heart shaped box; letters my late father had sent her. And I’ll keep her paisley scarf.