‘I knew she was dying, but didn’t expect her to time it so spectacularly’: losing my mother as my baby was born

Morwenna Ferrier: ‘A week before I was due to give birth, I realised my mother was going to die.’ Photograph: Kate Peters/The Guardian

At the top of my fridge is a small ceramic jar of stilton, and every time I open the door I can smell it. Recently, it’s started contaminating other food. This morning I binned some butter after it took on the same scent.

The stilton went off in July 2019 but I can’t bring myself to throw it away. It was a flat-warming gift from my mother, even though my boyfriend, Oscar, hates strong cheese and I was then six months pregnant, so unable to eat it. When she produced it from a calligraphed paper bag, wrapped in green tissue, we didn’t tell her this. Instead, we thanked her and put the cheese in the fridge. When we moved flats two years later, the cheese came with us.