Stories
At the start of December we still had a full set of Grannies, which seems quite unusual for people in their 40s. Their ages ranged from almost 90 to almost 102. But just before Christmas Jon's maternal Gran died and in early April my maternal Nanna also passed away - strange to think that our Mothers are now both orphans! By any standards Nanna had a 'good death' and, at a month short of her 102nd birthday and with all her faculties and in general good health (apart from her knees), she's certainly had 'a good innings'. On Thursday she was a bit sulky 'cos her special friend, Agnes, had gone into hospital for a few days whilst her diabetes was stabilized. On Friday she decided to stay in bed and receive her visitors and staff in regal state in her room - chatting to the Matron when she popped in, asking after her family and saying 'Have a good weekend and I'll see you on Monday'. On Saturday and Sunday she slept almost constantly and on Sunday evening the weekend Matron said that she didn't think Nanna would last the night. She didn't and died at 12.10 Monday morning. Strangely, Agnes also died within 24 hours.
As a child I loved listening to stories about my grandparents' and great grandparents' (yes, I can remember 4 of my great grandparents too!) lives and the passing of both of these two women, whom I adored, made me think of the stories that died with them and with the people who've gone before.
Nanna's father was still alive and living with her when I was born and Nanna used to mind me whilst my parents were at work. Apparently, 'Big Grandad' and I got on very well and I can still remember the large (he really was huge, especially to a small child) dark presence with a watch-chain constantly in his waistcoat. He died in his late 90s in 1971, in the same hospital that was treating me for the TB he'd given me and which killed him. We have photos of him as a young man playing football and family legend has it that he played for Newcastle and had a trial for Swindon Town, but decided to stay in Wigan. His father worked for the local aristocracy (yes, there was such a thing in Wigan...) also who had land in Scotland and there he picked up annecdotes about Robbie Burns - my Grandad learned them off his father-in-law and use to tell me them, but he's dead and I can't remember them.
Other stories concerned family tragedies: Big Grandad's beloved younger sister, alone in the house after school, reached up to the mantle shelf for something that she'd been told not to touch and her dress caught fire. Big Grandad was walking home across the field behind the house as she came running out with her dress ablaze. Nanna's own sister ('the favourite and very spoilt' according to Nanna - well, I said I adored her, I didn't say she was objective!) ran off with a GI during the war, leaving behind a husband and 3 young children, never to be heard of again. Nanna's mother literally 'dropped dead' after an evening at the cinema when she was a child and, with two young children to bring up, Big Grandad remarried. Nanna didn't talk much of her stepmother, but I got the impression that there was no love lost there. Nanna was apprenticed to a seamstress in her early teens and said she had to listen to her friends playing out after school whilst she stayed in and sewed.
Nanna married Grandad and he brought his own stories: learning to knit socks at school to send out to the soldiers during the First World War; some foods being only intermittently available during WW1 and his mother, hearing that a new delivery had arrived at the shop, sent him out in his school lunch break to get a couple of pounds of whatever it was. But, of course, all the old ladies had got there first and they always pushed this 8 year old boy to the back of the queue and he'd be scolded by his Mother when he went home empty handed; the strike he led at school - I bet he got thrashed for that! Nanna telling me that, when she agreed to go out with him, she found out that he'd got a girl waiting on every street corner!
Having children didn't come easily and after a series of miscarriages they had John, a little boy who lived only for an hour. So when my Mum was born she was baptisted immediately as she looking a bit doubtful too.
Jon's Gran was 96 when she died before Christmas. From her home in a tiny Wiltshire village she'd gone into service at the age of 14 to London - a nursery maid whose first charge was a little baby boy who went on to become a famous organist. Her stories: how, as a child, the gypsies had left a dog with her family to be cared for whilst they were away but she and her sister fell in love with the dog so, when the travellers returned, they hid it and said it had run away soon after they'd left; the telegraph pole she single-handedly 'liberated' for firewood during the war - well, it was just lying there...; the coalman who said he'd give her the fuel free if she'd carry it herself from the truck to her house on her back in the same way he did - he lost; her love of strong curries that was picked up from one of their tennants who was an army officer; oh, yes, and that incident at the butcher's during the war...
Researching your family history can give you some idea of the lives your ancestors led, but the stories are gone - Big Grandad's sister's death certificate may may give the bald facts, but the story will be lost to the future researcher who chances on it. I've been priviledged to know some wonderful people, all with unique stories that I wish I'd listened harder to and that I wish someone had recorded. There's more, there's so much more, and I feel like I want to sit and write everything down before I forget.
Anyway, here's to two women it's been an honour to know and the stories that go with them.
Bev
Labels: family history, funerals, grandparents, memories, stories
A slighty more interesting beetle was in the loading bay at the bottom of the stairs. I'd not seen one before so I thought it was a foreign import that had come in on a pallet, but then I spotted it in a magazine - the cockchafer beetle, mine was specifically the garden chafer variety. The general chorus when I pointed it out to colleagues was, 'I bet it does!', as it's about an inch long and has seemingly spikey legs, but it's a vegetarian. It's more commonly called the May bug and only lives for a few weeks in April and May. So, there you are, exercise AND education! I'm off for a lie down...
