In Memoriam

Two funerals in five days. I've got to say that we've had better weeks. But the turn out at both was amazing. With Gran H being 95, you don't expect many people to attend because most of their contemporaries are either dead or unable to travel; but Gran was such a great character that she had an impact on so many people's lives in the village and beyond, so the church was full. It was a very fitting tribute to her. I felt really guilty 'cos people kept coming up to me and saying, "Oh, you're so brave to come to Gran's just funeral before your Mum's", but as I said, "A day off work and a free lunch, what's not to turn up for?". I'm going to steal a comment that a friend made when we told him about Gran, I hope he doesn't mind, "You are right - jolly good innings - just took her eye off the ball as she closed in on her century. Never mind, splendid knock all the same." It's a cricketing metaphore that my Mum would have appreciated, but I suspect that she was slightly less than chipper to be bowled out for 73.

My parents' house had a small rain-forest's worth of cards when we got there at the weekend, with 10 - 20 more arriving in every post. We expected a good crowd at my Mum's, with her being a pillar of the church and on just about every circuit committee going but, when we got to church, a friend came out and said, "You won't believe how many people are in there." The church has folding doors at the back that can be opened to use an annex, and the back of the annex also has sliding doors that can be opened to bring the church hall into use. Well, both of those were open and the tables that had been set out in the hall for the post-funeral refreshments had to be moved. A conservative estimate is 250 people, many of whom had come from all corners of the counrty.

It was a very nice service - you can always tell when a Minister has actually known the deceased - and there was some excellent Methodist singing, with the Welsh exiles saying that the rendition of Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah was better than they'd heard at the Millenium Stadium (you know, I nearly typed Cardiff Arms Park there)!

We had a great 'funeral tea' (I was still eating the left-overs a week later!) and many people stayed 'til we'd got back from the crem., so we did lots of chatting and circulating. Varty's did a lovely job, as usual, but I felt like saying to Bill, "Don't take this amiss, but I really hope we don't see you for a while!", as 3 funerals in 2 years is enough for anyone. Mum's funeral was only a week short of being 2 years to the day since we'd buried her Mother. I think Dad's nearly paid for that natty little XF that the pall-bearers use on his own!

Funny moment of the last few weeks: when the Minister visited Mum a few days before died it was the first time that I'd met her 'cos she's quite new to the church. She looked at my Mum's comatose visage, looked at me, looked back to Mum and said, "Ooo, yes, I can see whose daughter you are!". I've got to say that my Mum had looked better than she did at that moment, but what do you say? "Er, yes, thanks..." was all I managed!

At the same moment we were cremating my Mum, the travel company was leaving a message on our answerphone telling us that the trip to Syria was cancelled. OK, so we'd expected it, but their timing could have been better! We've re-booked for the same trip next year. Apparently, for some travellers, it will be third time lucky as their trip last year was cancelled because of the ash cloud! So we're nicking the in-laws' MX5 and heading down to Northcote Manor in Devon again for the Easter weekend. I think we will appreciate some luxury and pampering.

Anyway, just because rellies are dying left right and centre and my holiday has been cancelled, that's no excuse not to listen to some excellent music. Currently playing on the car's CD is Faure's Requiem and I've managed to find the same version on-line. So here is the sublime Pie Jesu sung even more sublimely by Suzanne Danco (Decca 1960)

More Funerals

We've had two deaths in the space of a week. Jon's paternal Gran died in the early hours of Sunday 20th March and my Mum died at lunchtime on Saturday 26th. It was very sad to see Gran, who was always more akin to a force of nature, deteriorate over the past month or so, but she made it into her mid-90s - my Mum passing at 73 was rather more of a shock. Well, not an immediate shock, because we knew it was happening but in our families we just expect the women to live longer than that!

Mum had ovarian cancer 5 years ago and it came back very agressively during last year. After spending 8 weeks in The Christie Hospital in Manchester receiving excellent care and treatment, they found that the cancer wasn't responding to the chemo. So she had 4 weeks at home being looked after by my Dad and some lovely carers and District Nurses.

So, Gran's funeral is on Friday and Mum's is next Tuesday.

If anyone who knew Mum would like to donate to the Christie Hospital memorial fund, you'll find it here

More birthdays and holidays

You know, I think it will take me a very long time to lose the thrill of going for holidays during 'term-time'. Not only are they cheaper, but there are less people around and the weather is generally better - 'cos, as we all know, it rains as soon as the school holidays start.

The latest vacation was a week in the Elan Valley in Wales, during the first week of June, with all Jon's family to celebrate his Mum's round-number birthday. So, that's 7 adults and one two-and-a-half year old in 2 cottages in the middle of nowhere - some of the participants (Neil and Helen) couldn't even find the cottages and we had to send out a search party (Claire) to meet them and escort them in! (And even then they didn't believe where they were being led and thought Claire had taken the wrong road!)

The cottages were great and very eco-friendly (of course, the Centre for Alternative Technology isn't that far away), with rain water used to flush the loos, solar panels to heat the water for showering and a wind turbine for electricity. If it had only had a reed-bed sewerage system as well I don't think I'd have ever come home! The owners had a small-holding so there were sheep, ducks and chickens wandering round. Archie loved feeding the fowl and no, it isn't my fault that by the end of the week he was running round shouting, "Cock! Cock! Cock!".

The Elan Valley is gorgous. There's lots of places to walk and some excellent paths and bridleways, the Elan Valley Way and the Wye Valley Way are very well marked. Brilliant biking roads and there were lots of lovely motorbikes to gawp at, especially at the weekend. The valley is a series of reservoirs that were built in the late 19th/early 20th century to provide water for Birmingham; completely flooding the valley and displacing the residents. The dams are very impressive. There was a smaller reservoir, the Nant-y-Gro, which provided water for the workers' village whilst the other dams were being constructed. But, in 1942, Barnes Wallis was allowed to blow it up as part of his experiments to perfect the explosive depth charge that would be used a year later in the bouncing bombs that destroyed the Mohne and Eder dams. The surviving bits of the Nant-y-Gro dam can still be seen at each side of a small burn that trickles into the Cader Coch reservoir. There are lots of pictures in our photo album over on the right.

The nearest town was Rhayader which had two good butchers and various other shops and we had two very good meals at the Elan Hotel - we're very tempted to go back with the bikes and stay there.

Jon and I walked the 6 miles over to the Red Kite Centre at Gigrin Farm and met the rest of our party there one day. It was an amazing experience watching these enormous birds (6 foot wingspan) and getting really rather close to them. The farm owners put meat out once a day and dozens of birds appeared, in fact we could see them waiting on the hillside and in the trees just behind the farm! As well as Kites there were Buzzards and Crows joining in the fun - in the winter there can be up to 500 birds coming to each feeding session and some have even come down from Scotland (they can tell by the rings put on their legs).

We also visited Devil's Bridge and the ruined Cistercian abbey of Strata Florida. Oh, and sat around and read lots too. The weather was glorious and the owner said she's lived there since 1974 and she thought it must be some sort of record: a week without rain!

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