Saturday 26th August - in praise of granny squares

 They are one of the most portable handicrafts around; a ball of yarn and a crochet hook in a little bag and you are good to go. 

My mother made hundreds of the traditional multicoloured squares, each bordered in white, on long haul flights when she was living in Indonesia and later in Singapore. Later she handed over the whole bag to my godmother (her very good friend and a superb needlewoman) to sew up.

 Almost perfect for travelling.

Almost? I made the blanket above a few years ago using adriafil knitcol dk wool on our long car journeys to my godmother every week, sometimes twice a week, as we did our best to support her in her final months. Instead of doing the traditional thing of choosing different colours for each round, I just let the self-patterning yarn do its thing, and kept going until the ball was finished. The lovely colours fascinated her, and she looked forward to seeing how it was progressing and changing each visit.

And even less to carry around!

I've just finished the Tunisian crochet square. It was a little small, so I went round and round a few more times in what might be double or treble crochet, or both, or neither (I'm a bit hazy and need to refresh my memory. until I finished the yarn.

I'm not too bothered either way, as it is only destined to be another dishcloth. I'm just happy it's another 'finished object' and another bit of yarn gone from from my stash.

Tuesday 15th August - on dressmaker's chalk, coleslaw, and associated things

 This morning I finally unearthed the failed dress I made a few years ago, and first thought I would turn it into a skirt, and then changed my mind and decided to use it for this that and the other. The first being another tray cloth. Do you use them? I thought not. But my mother couldn't bear to take a tray of cups or plates or glasses anywhere unless it had a tray cloth on it. 

'Why,' I asked.

'Because my mother insisted that whatever the circumstances we should always use a tray cloth.' Bearing in mid that she lives through the war in the Netherlands, where life was unbelievably tough, I guess the persistence of tray cloths was a stand against all the other erosions of decency.

So now in my turn, I can't help but use a tray cloth. Some things are hereditary.

So I took my tray and laid it on the fabric. 'I know what I'll use!' I thought. 'That lovely tailor's chalk Ang sent me as a flat present.' (Ah yes, that was quite some holiday, Ang! You'll have to go back a month or so on her blog to get the reference to the pavement.)

    

It was very reluctant to leave a mark on the fabric... after several goes I realised it is a pencil eraser, and a very good one too! So I dug out the real dressmaker's chalk which worked perfectly first time.

 It is not often we have coleslaw, because I so dislike shop-bought. I find it too gloopy and wet, and usually has too much onion for my taste. A day or so ago I made some using about 50/50 finely shredded kohlrabi and white cabbage, a couple of spring onions chopped small,and a handful of peanuts. This last is a throwback to school days; they used to serve us a salad of finely grated carrots, mixed with peanut and raisins and I loved it. Couldn't do it now, with so many peanut allergies on the go (how did all those allergies happen?) 

For a dressing I mixed French Dressing from a bottle (Newman's Own) and Shop bought mayonnaise, again 50/50. Excellent.

I took some out of what was left for the next day, which was still good, and sprinkled it with a little Hot Smoked Paprika. That worked! And I perked up the remains at the bottom of the bowl with a small amount of creamed horseradish sauce.  Kohlrabi Coleslaw three ways!

Lunch today was a bit odd. The baked potato didn't cook in time, and we were in a hurry, as Tuesday is the day we take my father to his Bridge Club. So we just had meat and veg.

Later I cut the offending potato into wedges, sprinkled them with salt and gave them 15 mins at 180 in the air fryer. So tea/supper tonight was a bit odd too; cold sliced beef, bits of salad and hot potato wedges. 

Both meals tasted fine. 

Now we shall watch those poor teams pastry cooks being driven to their wits end and sobbing into their mousses, by a combination of Benoit and Cherish's impossible challenges and demands, and the two co-presenters just getting in the way with endless witticisms. I mean ' Bake-off, the professionals' of course.   

Monday 24th January - Flowers, anniversary of my mother's death, chocolate

I'm on a roll, at least for posting on this blog. I can't say the same about going for a daily walk (too cold) or practising the piano (not in the mood) or doing some drawing or painting (also not in the mood).

While it is so cold and grey I like to sit close to the radiator and read, or knit, or do Freecell and Suduko and the new craze, Wordle.

I'm also pretty occupied by thinking about the garden.

I have potatoes chitting on a windowsill upstairs

Micro greens making slow progress on the kitchen windowsill

and peas just beginning to sprout on a downstairs windowsill. These last are not for planting out, but for adding as shoots to salads once they are big enough.

 I've moved the tete-a-tete daffodils to the sitting room now that they are flowering. They are a such a pleasure, so cheerful, and also so poignant, because they remind me so much of my mother.

Yesterday was the sixth anniversary of her death, back in 2016. We had kept her room in the nursing home full of flowers, mostly pots of daffodils, all through the few weeks she was there after leaving hospital; balancing them as high as we could on the windowsill so that she could see them easily. As each pot of daffodils began to fade we would replace them, and I planted them in a row along the hedge at the bottom of the garden. 

She always had flowers in the house, and taught me how to arrange them, how to 'make a spider web from the stems, so that they criss cross and hold each other up'. The big glass bowl of tulips, the silver coffee jug of roses, the small vases of  grape hyacinths, vast displays of dahlias... 'put the leaves in first, and then add the flowers'. Bunches of cut daffodils always had to have some leaves with them, cut from the garden if necessary. 

It's a strange thing - we were all so focussed on supporting my father through this time, that I think we might have lost sight the rest of us to some degree, of her being my and my brother's mother, and such an important friend for my husband, and being a grandmother, and all the other members of the family and friends affected by her death. Ah well; that's how it was then, and here's how it is now. We did the best we could at the time. It's hard to think and clearly in the midst of everything.  Hindsight and all that.

Anyway, now I have daffodils too, because it's what you need in January and February, to fend off the grey days and now, to celebrate my mother's life.

I took the picture of the flowers just before we sat down to our little smackeral of something; cake and 'second coffee'. We try and restrain ourselves to just three coffees per day - morning, elevenses, and after lunch. Otherwise we would struggle to keep pace with ordering supplies!

I have a fairly inefficient and relaxed approach to watching my weight, which is probably why I still avoir  more poids that I would ideally like. My current aim is to begin each week  little lighter than I began the previous week. Here is a conundrum -  to be at my lightest I should weigh myself first thing in the morning, before breakfast but after going to the loo. Yes, fine, but that sets a harder target to meet the following week. But if I weigh myself after breakfast I'm likely to be disappointed that I don't weight very much less than before, or worse still, I'm heavier. 

My 'diet method', as I have said before, is to try and eat half as much as my husband.

 His plate is on the left, mine on the right. So far, so good. But then I'm more inclined to snack on this and that through the day - a handful of nuts, a chocolate button from the last of the Christmas store, a few crisps or crackers... He doesn't seem suffer from the same weakness, or maybe he is just very skilled at surreptitious snacking? I shall keep an eye on this.

I suppose I shouldn't make cakes if I were that concerned about my weight, or at least not the sort of cakes that I like to eat. That would be a start. 

It does make me very pleased, as well as slightly sad, that the milk chocolate in the Christmas stash is nearly all gone, and only a few milk chocolate buttons. Everything else is the rich, dark, intense kind of chocolate that the French apparently eat in small quantities for medicinal purposes, as a source of iron.  He will enjoy them; they don't have the same appeal for me. And as for the marzipan -  that's all his to enjoy with no competition from me.

  

Friday 14th January - An adventure in time travel

I  rang my father this morning to ask how he got on at the bridge club yesterday afternoon. Halfway through the question I realised that I was a day out in my reckoning - he goes to play bridge on Friday afternoons... and today was - no, it still is, for a few more hours, Friday. I'll ask him again tomorrow...

It's felt like that off and on all day. I think it could be because this was my first week of piano teaching, and I've managed to arrange my schedule so that Friday is completely clear. So after the last lesson on Thursday it feels as though it should be the weekend.

It was a glorious sunny morning today, and I briefly considered suggested we drive to the coast and look at the sea - every so often I get this yearning to stand at the sea and just look - gaze - view - absorb... Then I thought, no, it's the weekend and the seafront is usually crowded with families and scooters and dogwalkers, making socially distanced walking a constant game of chess, steeping off the footpath and struggling through the shingle for a couple of yards, back on the path, back on the shingle. So I gave up on the idea. But of course, it was Friday, and we could have gone. Oh well. Maybe the good weather will hold for next week as well.

Meanwhile I did go for a short stroll up our road and back, not far, but far enough for fresh air, to listen to the birds, enjoy the sunshine, and discover How Cold It Is. 

A friend brought me some daffodils in tight bud earlier this week. They began to think about coming out within hours, and now, a few days later, they are brightening the kitchen windowsill.

I took the picture just now, this evening which is why the background is black. The moon is nearly full - and for some complicated scientific reason we can see it through the sitting room window in the afternoon, a 'chalk moon', I call it, because that's what it looks like. I haven't quite got my head around why sometimes we see it through the front windows in the afternoon, looking to the east, and at other times at the back of the house in the morning, facing west. It has been explained to me, and I have read the explanation, but the reasons are clearly something that my brain has decided is not of importance to my happiness or survival. So, please don't try explain it to me again!

The tin tray beside the daffodils is a tray of rocket seed which I started off a day or so ago. They are just coming through;

Following the instructions in the Huw Richards vegetable book I made myself a 'sprinkle bottle' by taking an empty fruit juice bottle and carefully poking holes in the lid with a kitchen skewer. I am glad to report that I achieved this without skewering myself, and it makes an excellent device for watering the seedlings without flooding the windowsill.

The mitten project is progressing well. The is the current state of the fourth attempt;

 It fits fairly well - the right width, but a little long - my hands are pretty much shovel-shaped with broad palms and short fingers. I now need to pick up the stitches, currently kept safe on a piece of blue wool, and knit up the thumb. It seemed a good point to stop for tea. 

I'm tending to use my glass teapot now. A change that has been rather forced upon me; I couldn't understand why I appeared to be slopping tea onto my tray cloths quite so frequently until I discovered that the blue teapot had developed a crack from top to bottom on one side, and the tea was seeping out, when I was using it. I'm rather sad about that as it was a present from a piano student's mother. Ah well. I enjoyed using it while it lasted.

Tray cloths? I can't help myself. I am my mother's daughter - all trays always had to have cloths on them. I asked her about that, and she said it was because her mother insisted upon tray cloths... 

Tuesday 26th May - How a cup of coffee and a croissant...

...can magnificently improve mood and temper...

after the previous outbursts against That Man Who Should Have Known Better...

It's been a while since a last blog post - partly because I have had telephoneconversations or zoom chats with many family and friends recently. I expect there is news - but I can't think what. Mostly about flowers coming out (clematis, nemesia, snapdragons) and vegetables growing big enough to eat (lettuce leaves, spinach, radishes).

Or deliveries - now, that's a new excitement. Today we had a le creuset pan and a set of beard trimmers arrive. A few days ago a pair of trousers for me. In the sale! They fit well enough that I shall buy some more. I'm all for mending things where possible, but inside seams of jeans is a step too far. My next delivery isn't due until Thursday next week. One has to space them out.

We went for a long walk yesterday - in 'olden times' it would have been a gentle stroll but I did find it more taxing than in days of yore. We stopped at my father's abode to deliver breakfast cereal, and went on through the path by the river towards a friend who lives across the dual carriageway. The Offsprings may remember this tree;

The banks have eroded considerably in the twenty odd years since wenused to drop you carefully through the hole to the extreme left of the photograph, playing 'Alice through the Rabbit Hole'. Nowadays the way through the huge hole on the right leads to a gentle earthy path leading down to the river. Nowhere near as thrilling an adventure, all the perils of slipping and sliding down the muddy slope into the water are gone.

 We carried on, crossing the golf course (ruined as a walk these days now that the golfers are back, solemnly hitting little golf balls and then having to go and find them by themselves - I thought people bought dogs to retrieve things that disappeared into long grass). While dodging golfers we discovered a pond that I hadn't come across before. All serene and peaceful in the sun.

The wild roses are flowering now;

  

very pale and luminous in the shadowy part of the path. 

Of course, once we turned for home and I realised how far we had to walk back... but we made it, social distancing all the way. 

Otherwise, the days and weeks have been a succession of zoom chats, zoom meetings, zoom piano lessons, knittings and crochetings and drawings and pianoings. I did get out the cello on the Thursday 'clap for the nhs' (that does sound disgusting to my ears, but that's because of knowing too much about what used to be called 'the special clinic' when my mother worked in one). I brazened my way through a bit of 'Salut d'Amour' - the opening theme before it gets all passionate and modulatory - and 'Amazing Grace'.

I've heard that the lady who started the 'clap for the nhs' is thinking that it should stop after this week - the 'exit strategy' was always going to be the thing. In our road we come out and clap and cheer and then chat for a few minutes. 

Ah well. We shall see.

 

31st March - Mothering Sunday

The children came up trumps;

In order of unpacking/unwrapping

flowers and a card, delivered while we were out and left basking in the sunshine on the front door step. But a neighbour spotted them, took them home and brought them back later. Thank you!   

A wonderful card of Chichester cathedral, constructed so that it folds flat when you close the card, and a whole handful of finger puppets - just the right size to keep me company when I am out and about. (I expect you thought I might use them with piano pupils, but they are mine, not for sharing!) I did take them to church...

The church service today was mostly very un-serious (and I'm afraid I wasn't feeling serious in most of the serious bits). I spent most of the time in between 'writing on a post-it' and 'lighting a candle for your mother' chatting with the young care assistant who now comes with a member of the congregation who needs a lot of support. For years we (in the church) have taken turns in bringing her to church, looking after her, and taking her back, and it was my turn today, but now that she is older she needs 'more care'. This was the third time her assistant came too; every time has been different and I don't think she has been used to going to church anyway. I suspect 'church' at St John's is not what she was expected...

All us ladies were given flowers, including the care assistant, rather to her surprise. Here are mine;
 

I used to take home a bunch for my mother... today, while searching through my phone for pictures to show to 'my lady', I kept being ambushed by pictures of Mummy in hospital after the stroke, Mummy in various stages of recovery, Christmases over the years, and then, the flowers from her funeral, just over three years ago. 

There are a whole raft of 'legacy journals' out there now, 'nearly-blank' books with prompts and questions and suggestions

             

which you fill in for your children, or with your children, to write down all those stories about where you lived, where you went to school, anecdotes, funny stories, etc. I'm rather wishing I had done that with Mummy. I could just write down as much as I remember of the stories she used to tell... I wonder what my father would think if I bought one for him?

****   ****   ****

The sun is out, but the wind is cold. I shall make some 'new you' tea and enjoy the flowers, cards and finger puppets. Thank you, everyone, for my presents.

Friday 5th October - Connections

The book club choice for last month was 'A Time of Gifts' by Patrick Leigh Fermor'. I had already read it several years ago, and enjoyed it then.

I think it may be one of the first books that Mummy read after her stroke; I have one of those penguin '40s' books of just the first few chapters (my brother gave me 40 of them for my fortieth birthday, rather clever, I thought). She loved the descriptions of the Netherlands, especially Rotterdam, before the war.

I spotted this book by Robert MacFarlane and downloaded it because it was only £1.99 and I liked the cover picture;

Then I discovered it is all about Robert MacFarlane's reaction to having been given a copy of 'A Time of Gifts' by a friend.... and the effect gifts of books have on the giver and the recipient.

My father, a couple of weeks ago, insisted on buying me a copy of 'The Hare With Amber Eyes' by Edmund De Waal.

At the book club meeting, one of the members commented that there is a link between 'A Time of Gifts' and 'The Hare', in that a descendant of someone that PLF stayed with on his travels appears in 'The Hare'. I will have to finish the 'Gifts' i order to make the connection.

I've just started 'The Hare', but stalled in the first paragraph of the preface (I nearly always read the preface - it can be the best part of the book!) where De Waal recounts going to a language school in Shibuyah, Japan.

I teach an extremely popular chant in my music classes, which goes;

Shibuyah! Shibuyah! Ha! Ha! Shibuyah! Hoh!

You then go on to add individual statements before repeating the chant.

I'd always thought 'Shibuyah' was a made-up word; it has a lovely sound and feel. And then the word leapt at me when I was least expecting it!


The chapter names in 'The Hare With Amber Eyes' are so enticing that I can't wait to find out more;

I ought to get up. It is nearly lunchtime. Himself has been busy fixing the gates back to the driveway; a job which has been 'on the list' for a few years. Every time he goes to the tool cupboard in the next room, I hear 'hohoho Merry Christmas' from the Toy Father Christmas that was in a stocking so many years ago. Its battery is lasting well.

Sunday 9th April - A Day at the Beach

Back at the beginning of the year I started making a list of 64 things I'd like to do this year. The number isn't of any significance apart from that's how many lines there are in my notebook. However, "A day at the seaside" did feature, and on Sunday I was able to put a star by that item...

The occasion was a family gathering to scatter my mother's ashes on the beach where she grew up, in Ijmuiden, The Netherlands.



It is a long, long flat sandy beach, with dunes where she used to play with her best friend when they were very young. As children, on some of our occasional visits to the Netherlands, we had stayed in her sister's beach hut. I remember sand castles, and riding a horse, and kite-flying. Chips with mayonnaise, chewing zoethout (and spitting the fibrous strands into the sand everywhere). Gas lighting. Sun. Wind. The cold North Sea.


Now, after all these years, we were back there, along with many of the Dutch relations. Most of us hadn't seen each other for decades. The cousins we used to play and argue with are all grown up (like us!).

It was a hot sunny day, tempered by a sharp wind, just as it had always been in my memory. A "beach taxi" - now there's a brilliant idea - took us along the beach away from the crowds, to a quiet place among the dunes, and there, we made a depression in the soft sand, and deposited the ashes. We covered them over, and scattered petals, and taosted her memory with prosecco. Someone (was it her sister?) thought she would like a share in the drinks too, so we poured some of the prosecco over the petals.

It was all very casual, very informal, very easy. A little quiet, maybe, but not solemn. And afterwards we went back to a pavilion for a (very late!) lunch together and catch up on theevents of the past forty years.

Back in January, last year, leaving her bedroom in the nursing home after we had gone to see her on the same morning that she had died was hard, very hard. I felt disorientated, and rather at a loss as to what to do next (lunch, as it happened, proved to be the right decision then as well!).

Later in February, walking out the the crematorium at the end of the funeral felt entirely wrong, as though, once again, I was leaving her when I should really stay (as I felt on so many occasions when we visited her in hospital). I took the funeral wreaths home with me, at my cousin's suggestion, and re-arranged the flowers into vases. That helped a lot.

Leaving the spot in the dunes was easy - the sun shining, the wind blowing. We had brought her to one of the places where she had been so happy. The other funeral and memorial gathering had all been about "us" - the family. This one was about her.

Thursday 15th December - From one generation to the next

Dali clock, snipped from amazon

Yesterday, or was it the day before? Doesn't matter.

The daughter volunteers in a charity shop, and a young customer came in, and said that they were sure they knew her... after a while they realised that I used to teach her the recorder in Primary School, probably about ten years ago...

Maths clock, snipped from amazon

Ten, or was it maybe maybe fifteen years ago? Doesn't matter.

I was walking towards the mirror at the top of the stairs, and was totally disconcerted, disorientated as it seemed as though my mother was walking towards me, apparently through a portal that doesn't exist....

Christmas tic toc clock, snipped from amazon

Thirty, or was it maybe thirty-five years ago? Doesn't matter.

My mother was having her portrait painted, out in Indonesia. For some reason, the artist started by covering the canvas with a swirling mist of pink, and then painted just my mother's eyes. "You can stop right there, and start again!" said my mother. "I'm not having Her looking out of MY picture!". The artist had painted a true and effective likeness of my mother's mother's eyes...

snipped from http://www.sundials.co.uk/~thames.htm

History repeating itself. Rather comforting, when you consider it. 

And I've found an idea for a sunny afternoon in London sometime.

  

Tuesday 13th December - Remembering this time last year

This season of the year is full of happy things and busy things and hassling things and preparation things... Our Christmas Tree, Christmas Shopping, Advent Calendars (yes, I have FOUR this year ), the Advent Candle

This year's candle

Last Year's Candle

This season of the year is also tinged with a little sadness; Last year I prefaced blog posts about my mother with a photograph of the Advent Candle














The white bear that arrived from Canada in December last year, to watch me put up the tree, and to provide hugs when I needed them.

This year's Christmas Cactus - in flower far too early!

A Christmas Cactus plant in flower will always have extra memories for me now. This is the one I bought for my mother when she was in the Nursing Home. It has already finished flowering this year, ;

Last year's plant

And here's my original one, photographed in full flower this time last year.

Saturday 14th May - The Narrative of a Life

We had a tea party/reception to celebrate the life of my mother last Saturday. It was a good time, lots of friends and family getting together, some who had come to the funeral back in February, others who hadn't been able to come then.

Some of the "chat" was sharing memories, but a lot of the time was spent catching up with each other - which is just the sort of thing my mother would have enjoyed.

Although it was a cheerful and happy occasion, it was none-the-less emotionally tiring. As the weeks go by, I find that we are all putting together the separate pieces of the differing stories we have. My own relationship with my mother is characterised by the fact that it began forming when I was a baby, and that has coloured everything for the rest of my life. But my husband has only had an adult to adult relationship. Others knew her as a child, or as an older relative, or as a fun-loving member of the group of twenty-year-olds, all going to pubs and night clubs together back in the 1950s.

Assembling all these views and angles, encountering sudden surprises and insights, hearing "missing chapters" is fascinating stuff. In the end, we have to come to an acceptance of these differing narratives, melding them together to find the complex, creative, loving-and-giving person that she was, and has made us all to be in our turn.



http://www.davidaustinroses.co.uk/albertine

 

Wednesday 6th April - My Mother - photographs

I have over 1000 photographs on my phone at the moment, which is ridiculous.

This post is about my mother, just warning you. Have a tissue ready if you need one.

Some of them are unbearably precious, so one of this week's tasks is to transfer the important ones to the computer, save a few important ones on my phone, and delete the rest.

It's a fairly quick process - create the subject folder on the PC, select the photographs on the phone and click my way through the menus until they all magically appear on the PC screen.

Except - except - I have the pictures of my mother, taken during her last stay in hospital, taken in the Nursing Home, taken at Christmas, taken the afternoon before she died, taken after death...

You may think it was "bad taste" to take pictures of her, so still, just hours after she died... but I'm glad I did - various close family members weren't there, couldn't be there for a while afterwards, and she looks so peaceful, unruffled -  and gone. I think they were glad to see that she looked - well - all right.

Hey, don't think I'm sad, grief-stricken, cast into depths. I did my grieving over the last three-four years. I've also got pictures of her from our Wedding Day, nearly 30 years ago. My word, but she was pretty. Glamorous. Beautiful. Vivacious. I'll keep a few of those on my phone. I salute the courageous, lively, determined character she was in her last years, and indeed all through her life.

But if you have important, irreplaceable photographs on your phone, DO SOMETHING now, before it's too late...

Tuesday 5th April - My Mother - Cabbages

It may look to other people that the past months of my mother's final illness, her death, the funeral, the clearing up, are behind me.

Think again.

These ornamental cabbages and primulas were bought last November as a back-up plan for their 60th Wedding Anniversary Plans as possible table decorations at their Grand Tea Party.

They were not needed after all, so I planted the cabbages in pots outside the front door, and the primulas were stuffed into troughs which already had bulbs in them from last year 

The cabbages (the ones that weren't eaten by slugs) are now bolting, and have turned from elegant rosettes into ramshackle pagodas.

So, there they are - at my coming in and my going out - a little twinge of memory.

She was a great cooker of cabbages, my mother. Actually, she was a great cook. At the convent prep school I went to, they had acres of huge red cabbages in the vegetable garden. The sight filled me with despair. I knew that they would turn up at lunch time, boiled to a despondent murky grey. At home we had delicious red cabbage braised in butter with apples and onion and cloves red currant jelly and brown sugar and vinegar long before Delia Smith had ever educated the British public on the proper way to cook red cabbage.

Green or white cabbage should also be braised in butter, with bacon bits and maybe a touch of caraway seed.

Sauerkraut comes in jars - dead easy. You just need several different kinds of pork - cops, or belly strips, fried and the fat and juices used to make gravy, smoked continental boiling sausage, a chunk of boiled bacon, and floury boiled potatoes. Oh, and the sauerkraut, zapped in the microwave. And German mustard. Beer maybe, to drink. Rennies for afterwards. Difficult to make for less than a whole household.

We used to have Bratwurst-mit-sauerkraut-und-senf in bread rolls when we were ski-ing, for lunch.

I'll be replacing the ornamental cabbages in the next week or so. I plan to plant all the primulas and bulbs under the hedge at the bottom of the garden, where they will get morning sun next Spring, and see if they come up again. I was going to do that after lunch today, but the sun went in. Now, at half past five, it's sunny again. That's how it goes.  
 

Monday 8th February - Flowers, and Funeral

I'm writing this on Wednesday 10th.

I haven't written earlier about my mother's funeral because it's been a bit non-stop since then. I've a quiet half hour now, when I've time and energy and "groundedness" to be able to put words into a coherent order.

The funeral was late afternoon, 4pm, and plenty of people came - how lovely to see you all! Thank you, especially the cousins who struggled with railway chaos to get there, (and commiserations to the cousin who was defeated by the railway chaos and had to turn back).

I felt that it was a warm, loving affair, in keeping with my mother's nature. I'm not going to go into details, so if you want to know more about the service, or receive a copy of the sheet, get in touch. 

As we came out of the chapel, we were greeted by a friendly, well-mannered cat! That was a surprise. It walked among us in a stately, suitably serious way, providing a bit of light relief to us cat-friendly-people, and a neutral topic of conversation. Well done, cat.

The flowers were beautiful: a big spray from all the family, and a wreath from my mother's oldest friend from kindergarten days.

the family flowers



The wreath from my mother's friend - a bit blurry, sorry!

One of the bearers removed the cards and handed them to me with a rose - and I thought - why leave the flowers there to fade and wither? So we all helped ourselves to the roses, freesias and tulips out of the big spray. My cousin said that she had taken the wreath from her father's funeral, and enjoyed at home for several days, so I did the same. I put the roses from the family flowers in a vase and left it with my father.

The wreath looked a bit - wreath-like? - on my dining-room table, and a little difficult to explain to all the piano pupils that come and go.

 

 

So I pulled the flowers and greenery out, and arranged them in a dish instead. The scent of the hyacinths is now filling the room. 

Flowers were such a part of my mother's life - it seemed entirely appropriate to bring them home rather than walk away.

Sunday 7th February - Taking a Breather

This week has been fairly, but not impossibly, full of detail.

Tomorrow will be the service at the crematorium. This has dominated large chunks of every day. Probably larger chunks of my father's days than mine.

But, like a cliché, everyday life continues.

The branches on the willow trees have turned to amber and honey gold. (This picture is from last Spring, as I wasn't able to stop and take a picture this week.)

Our next-door-neighbour's crocuses are out in drifts across their flower beds. And I checked when I was driving past a particular sheltered south-facing hedge on Friday, and the earliest hawthorn leaves are definitely out.

This weekend has been full of family time, as son and daughter have been around. We've been out for a pizza together, played board games, eaten chocolate, sat about and just generally given ourselves an easy couple of days together. Tomorrow will be what it is - the music has been chosen, the service sheets printed, the various tributes written, the other words and poems chosen. Finger crossed (especially in view of the weather forecast!)

Thursday 28th January - A tourist in Limbo-Land

I feel as though I am in some kind of alternate universe. I keep going from one kind of limbo-land to another.

After my mother died on Saturday, and we had got over the initial reactions, there was nothing we could do until Monday. We entered a strange kind of "normal life" - going out for meals together, chatting. Other people were also at the pub, walking around, doing whatever, in their "normal lives". I wonder if any of them were like us, in a limbo-land?

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday were busy and empty by turns; collecting documents, making and going to appointments to register a death, make funeral arrangements, collecting her things from the Nursing Home... Moments of concentration and activity interspersed with... this and that.

I started teaching; a piano lesson on Monday, one of my classes  on Tuesday, more instrumental lessons yesterday and today.

And the emails! Oh, the emails! and the phone calls! oh, the phone calls! About half were all about family arrangements. The other half are work-related - dealing with the fall-out from cancelling lessons last week and this week, and confirming which lessons I will be teaching this week.

I'm in another limbo-land until Saturday, when we meet to decide the form the funeral service will take - what music, which readings and so on.

Then, I suppose, another week in a different limbo-land, when I go about normal life until the day of the funeral?

Part of the weird, dis-connected feeling I have must be due to the weird, dis-connected way I feel about my mother's death. When she had the major stroke, that was one "end-of-life-as-I-know-it" event. Everything changed, for all of the family in different ways. Then, when she became ill in November, everything changed again. Once she moved to the Nursing Home, it was always just a matter of time - days? weeks? months? sooner? later? who could tell? Her condition meant that aspiration pneumonia was always there in the background.

So. She was lively and "alive" all through the Christmas period, and then, quite suddenly, became ill, and sleepy, and drowsy, and asleep, and - gone., giving us all a few days to reconcile ourselves to the situation.

Here's a good poem: we may or may not use it at the funeral, but that doesn't matter. This kind of sums up how Friday and Saturday went.

     

Saturday 23rd January - Family

There is no easy way to write this -

Yesterday my husband took my father to visit my mother in the morning, and then took me again in the afternoon. My mother was asleep all the time, but maybe she was able to hear us? Who can tell. We took away the sad cyclamens and replaced them with fresh daffodil bulbs.

Last night I read the compline service to myself, as I often do, before turning out the light and going to sleep, and one of the prayers goes

"May the Lord Almighty grant me and those I love a peaceful night and a perfect end."

Well, whether you believe in the Lord Almighty or not, my mother did have a peaceful night, and, as far as we can tell, a perfect end. We were phoned by the nursing home at 9am to let us know that my mother had died quietly in her sleep, with no sign of disturbance and only a very short time before they had gone in to see if she would wake.

I think my main emotion at the moment is a sense of relief, as well as sadness. She had worked so hard, ever since her stroke, to make the very best of all things in all circumstances. Of course we shall all miss her sorely, but I'm glad that she can now rest. In peace.

(the tallest daffodil bud was just coming into flower this morning)