How a vile diatribe in a Morecambe newspaper led my mother to forsake her heritage, dye her hair blonde and have plastic surgery, says DAVID JONES, who was kept in the dark about her true background By David Jones Published: 02:47, 28 May 2024 | Updated: 04:29, 28 May 2024 e-mail 1 View comments Almost 30 years have passed since my mother, Phyllis, died from cancer of the brain, and it still hurts my heart to remember how she suffered so bravely through two gruelling but unsuccessful operations to remove her tumour and months of chemotherapy. Yet my saddest memory is that of a woman who yearned for spiritual comfort and the reassurance of an afterlife, but feared what might become of her because — many years earlier — she had felt compelled to relinquish her Jewish faith. During her final days, she would ask me to take her to Christian churches dotted around Morecambe, in Lancashire, and sit with her as she tried to pray for salvation, only to give up after a few minutes and say — with a wistful smile — that it was just no good: she must be ‘talking to the wrong God’.
Almost 30 years have passed since my mother, Phyllis, died from cancer of the brain, and it still hurts my heart to remember how she suffered so bravely The denouement to this painful story came after she died. Though mother had asked for a religious funeral, she hadn’t attended a synagogue — nor any place of worship — for decades and hadn’t specified where she wished to be buried, so my sist.
