“Although people were kind, looking back I think there was a certain sense of isolation, or self-sufficiency, and just getting on with it”

Owen Marshall’s mother died when the boy, who was to become one of New Zealand’s most esteemed writers, was only two. He has a single fleeting memory of a woman who might – or might not – have been his mother, and it’s stayed with him through the eighty-plus years since.

“When I think of my mother, I don’t think of a loss… I had my dad”

Roberta Hope’s mother died when the girl was only five. Now in her fifties, Roberta has few memories of her mother. However, she was buoyed through her childhood by the love of her dad, and never felt she lacked for a mum.