Wow what a really hard question, but one that made me think loads about stuff I normally try to forget.
I think for me, my happiest and saddest memories are rolled up into one.
I had a really difficult childhood, a history of domestic violence, alcoholism and poverty, so as soon as I was 18 I left home and never really looked back.
I maintained contact with my family but on my terms, and would only meet them in social situations, never went to the house and often met my parents separately, even though they were still living together with my brothers. Then about 3 years ago my parents split up and my mum came to rely very heavily on me as she had never had to really deal with life before, my dad always had for her, and she was totally unable to cope.
During this period I actually spent more time with her than I ever growing up and did things that we had never done, really simple things like going out to dinner with her and my brother, going shopping at the xmas market, going shopping for things for her house, all very simple everyday things that for soo many years I don't have any memories of ever doing.
Then in October 2003, my mum went into hospital for a test, anmd was diagnosed with terminal cancer of the throat, she spent 5 months in hospital but despite all the odds she kept pulling back from death. She was always insistant that she wanted to go home, and at the end of January there was nothing left the hopsital could do for her, she had to be allowed her wishes, which were to go home.
I was against this and was angry and upset with her, worried about giving up my job to take care of her, which I couldn't afford to do, and generally panicking about how she would live at home, unable to speak (she had a hole in her throat) and being feb by a stomache tube, and with the possibility of choking or indeed dying at any moment.
Despite all this she maintained that she wanted to go home and so she did, living happily and independently with help from myself, a friend and nurses until she died in June last year.
Although this is incredibly sad for me, it also my happiest memories, as I finally got to do things with my mother, that had I not given her a second chance and beenable to forgive the past, I never would have experienced, and would be living bitte, cynical and angry Like I was before. It also, for the first time in my life, allowed me to see my mother as an inspirational, strong and brave woman. I saw her cry once in all that time and that was for me and my brothers and not for herself, and at the hopsital when they told her there was no hope for her and that she had possibly only weeks to live, her first words were, will you be ok? I had waited my whole life to hear that from her, and believe me, it was worth the wait.
I know have bittersweet memories of this period, calling her and there being no answer, rushing to see her and finding that she'd gone to the pub with her friends regardless one evening, xmas day when she was stealing the turkey off my plate despite the fact she wasn't meant to have solids and her showing my certificates from work round the nurses at the hospital, she'd never said she was proud of me before. Right up to the moment she died, my mother was source of humour, inspiration and strength to me, I will be forever grateful that I had the opportunity to experience this, reconcile my past and live for the future.
Anyway, enough of my sad and happy story, just wanted others who have had difficult times/pasts to know that it's never too late for things to change and that often it takes a difficult time, a crisis an exceptional time to bring out the inner strength of people, and that we should never forget that. Also try to reconcile yourself with who are family and friends are, we will be much happier then, and also to appreciate the good times we have had, and remember them, because it's all to easy to fgorget them in bitterness and anger, and then it may be too late. It's true that we never really know or appreciate what we have until it's gone, and I will cout myself lucky for the rest of my life that I had the opprtunity to find out.