Mark Andrews – how a humble pot plant bought joy to my mum's last weeks

Knowing that it might well be the last Mother's Day I would be sharing with my dear old mum, it had to be a good one.

On the other hand, knowing what to buy in such circumstances can be surprisingly difficult. The old staples of wine or chocolates were out of the question for medical reasons. And anything that hinted even remotely at the long-term would come across as tactless, probably causing more in the way of upset than happiness.

To be honest, I'm pretty useless at buying presents at the best of times. It's not that I don't try, I really do. My legendary talent for procrastination, which usually involves a last-minute dash about 5pm on Christmas Eve, doesn't help, of course. But the biggest problem – one I suspect will be a familiar to a lot of men – is a lack of imagination or foresight. We all know it's the thought that counts, but when you don't actually have any thoughts, the only solution seems to be to chuck more money at the problem. And hope that a bit of generosity can compensate for a total lack of vision or emotional intelligence.

I think the worst present I ever bought anyone was the electrically heated ice-scraper. It seemed a good idea in theory, a funky hi-tech gadget that would make light of scraping the windscreen on a frosty morning. So much so, in fact, that I actually bought one for myself as well, and quickly discovered how pointless it was. By the time it was warm enough to clear the screen, I had already done so using an un-funky, low-tech bottle of de-icer. And then had to find somewhere to put this red-hot gadget where there wasn't a risk of it setting fire to the passenger seat.

Anyhow, in true Andrews style, the inspiration for my mum's present came about teatime the day before Mother's Day. In the queue at Wilko.

Now even I was sensitive enough to know that a bunch of flowers wouldn't really cut it this time. And a pot plant by the checkout of a discount hardware store might sound only marginally more meaningful. But the masses of glorious pink blooms on this piece of high-street horticulture had turned my head, and I couldn't possibly imagine who would not fall in love with it when they saw it.

And for once in my life, I actually got the judgement call right. To this day, I have no idea what the name of the plant was – it probably said on the label, but I never really bothered with that – and it cost less than a tenner. To make up for my parsimony, I felt obliged to buy another plant, a lily I believe, which lasted about five days.

But while the lily was a let-down, the Big Pink Plant From Wilko bloomed and bloomed, and brought so much joy to my mum during the last weeks of her life. It became a regular talking point, with almost every visitor remarking on how wonderful it looked. When my mum was taken into hospital the following month, it became my responsibility to look after it, and somehow I have managed to keep it alive, despite my horticultural skills being, if anything, marginally worse than my talents for buying presents.

It is five years to the day since I presented my mum with the Big Pink Plant, and my mum died shortly afterwards. Yet the plants lives on, and will always be intertwined with the memory about my mum's last weeks. It wasn't an easy time of course, but the plant did make my mum smile, and I'm so glad I bought it. For someone not given to displays of sentimentality, it is something I have become quite attached to.

At least I call it the Big Pink Plant, but it isn't really any more.

Coincidence I'm sure, but it stopped flowering when my mum died.