Other times it was a walk, a scoot, a dwardle and a climb.

In the early days, your eyes would search for me in the playground and light up when I was found. “Mummy!” you would cry and you would sprint into my arms.

More recently my eyes would search for you, bag adrift and tie awry, a giggle down Oxford Road with a gaggle of friends.

Sometimes, I would be distracted and hasty. A call from work. An engrossing thought. A resentment of the 3.30pm curfew that cut across productive afternoons.

Other times I would gaze at you on the road ahead and feel again that first amazement: “Are you really my son? Are you really my boy?”

Each day would bring a different conversation, each day a different mood. But the route was well-trodden and the rituals were clear: hiding in the wasteland, crossing with the lolly-pop man, looking for the ice cream van, climbing along the handrail by the neighbourhood office, walking along the Silver Street wall…

One day, amongst the demands of work and requests to play with friends, we walked home together for the last time. When that day was, I cannot say but today is your last day at primary school so that day has passed, for sure.

And so I grieve. I mourn the interruption: the gazing, the scooting and the dwardling. I feel the loss of the small, repeated acts of ordinariness – the 10p sweets and muddle of bags.

Thank you for the school run, my son. Celebrate. Enjoy. Take pride in growing up. And please also know that whatever your day, someone is waiting for you. Wherever you play, there’s someone who delights in you. However you meander, you’re being brought safely home.

The grief in going up to the loft to exchange the 0-3 month old baby-grows for the 3-6 month ones, the grief of withdrawing the breast and saying: “No more,” the grief of a child’s first day in school.

It is widely accepted that many parents need to grieve when their children leave home. “Why wait til then?” I say.

I have wept over a boy becoming so bonny and chunky he has to be moved from his Moses basket into a cot, over him becoming so independent he no longer finds it necessary to curl my thumb within his hand.

I am grateful to a friend who gave me this poem when I was puzzling over why something as good and natural as a child growing up should also be so poignant.

It  is the kind of question that only a poet can answer.  What better answer than this could there be? Walking Away by C D-Lewis.

It was never part of my plan to play the organ for funerals, but it just so happened that I became a church organist because I could play the piano and there was a vacancy on the organ stool.

And so it was that playing for funerals became part of the rhythm and texture of my life and has been for the past 20 or so years.

Each funeral is different

Some funerals are huge standing-room-only affairs – 400 people squashed into the space with not enough orders-of-service to go round and with trouble being heard at the back.  Others are pitifully small and lonely.

Sometimes the person who died is someone who has approached death without fear and who leaves an inspiring legacy to her mourners.
Other times the coffin is shockingly small, carried by a mother and father in unbearably poignant steps.

Some families know exactly how they want the service to be conducted. They are well organised.  I have time to practice and my brief is clear.

Other times – and I enjoy these more, if I’m honest – I’m waiting for the hearses to arrive before I can find out what tune they want to what hymn and what I should do with this rock band that has turned up unannounced and set up in the corner.

I am humbled to be taking part

But whatever kind of funeral it is – black or white, peaceful or tragic, smooth or veering on the chaotic – I always feel profoundly humbled to be taking part.

What can you say to people who are bereaved?  Not a lot.  Words lose their currency in the rawness of grief.

But music….quietly playing as families hold cold hands and kiss their beloved’s face before the coffin lid is  closed…offering suggestions of amazing grace, hints of heaven’s morning breaking….

I am so honoured. It is one of the best things that I do.

Image on blog menu page: @szbrozek

My last day at the Birmingham Post was Tuesday 22 December 2009. I slid out on a farewell blog like Santa on his sleigh. Here is my heart-felt post, with added pictures, which was published in the Birmingham Post that day.

Bye bye Birmingham Post

Bye bye Birmingham Post. I have been with you for more than 21 years. In those years you have been through eight editors, gone from being a broadsheet, to a tabloid, to a broadsheet and back to a tabloid again, only we don’t call you that. You were black and white then, you’re colour now. You were a six day a week publication when I joined. Now you are a multi-media operation of which the newspaper is only a part.

In those 21 years, I have changed too. My mother has died, I’ve been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, I’ve lived in community, I’ve lived on my own and I’ve lived with my family. I’ve married, I’ve had a son, I’ve had two books published and I’ve learnt to sing jazz. I’ve gone from being an angry idealist determined to change the world to someone who is content to change her little bit of it and is happier than I knew was possible – same hairstyle though.

Farewell everyone I have ever interviewed

Farewell everyone I have ever interviewed. I became a journalist because of you. It’s been an honour to hear your stories and to tell them as faithfully as I could, whatever the pressure of my deadlines or the barking of the newsdesk. There are some of you who have touched me so deeply, I will never forget you. Thank you for your trust and for making my work such a privilege.