What a terrible week. You get them sometimes.
Last Monday we heard that the auntie up in Scotland who developed dementia when a routine operation went wrong, had died. It isn’t a matter for regret, she was in a hospice, barely clinging on to existence.
She meant a lot to us. All the years I exhibited in Scotland were all the years we stayed there or nearby. She was the just-older sister of my mother-in-law and her house was the one my in-laws went to on the weekends they weren’t visiting us. The S&H grew up with this auntie as a surrogate grandmother. When he was little we used to go and set up the show and the auntie and the little S&H arrived together by bus sharing a bag of sweets. When I first married this auntie was wary of me, she had been to girl guides with my mother and thought I might be my mother’s daughter. Either I was and she forgave me, or she decided I wasn’t. Either way we got on like a house on fire and shared the dolls’ house hobby with great enthusiasm. She was funny and nice and kind and everything you would ever want in an aunt or grandmother. The last few years have been awful, she was a most active person, regularly running up the Ben, which for the unScottish means climbing the mountain behind her house, often before Sunday lunch. She was utterly undeserving of dementia, she kept very fit until it all went horribly wrong
The OT has gone up to the funeral today with a relative he didn’t know he had. I wish I were going with him but I’m staying here with our car in case I have to get to my mother quickly at the other end of the country.
The second death we heard of when visiting on Wednesday, although it happened on Tuesday.
Although my parents had lived in their house for seventeen years before my father died, it was me who made friends with the neighbours opposite. I don’t know how we met but I instantly got on with them because of the Scottish connection. I found I had so much in common, we quickly became friends and soon, in the year when I lived with my mother, the neighbour would tell me if there was anything untoward when I was at home, and pop in to see my mother, if she thought there was a problem. In between all this care she was travelling up to Glasgow to care for her mother and Mother-in-law, though her mother died last year, and to London to see her brother, also very ill. All on his own, her husband started putting my mother’s dustbins out for her on collection day. He had a key to the gate behind which the bins lived and only gave it to the carers last year so that they could put the bins out. A few weeks ago his wife said he had health problems and on Wednesday came over with a note that she handed in and ran away. The note said he had suddenly died in hospital. They are a couple in their sixties, who have been looking after everyone else, and, as their daughter, in Switzerland, married earlier this year, hopefully anticipating grandchildren in the fullness of time.
So we returned sadly and the following night the OT came back from the pub looking shattered to say a good friend of ours, our age, had suddenly died of pneumonia on Wednesday.
The friend who died held several positions in and around this town, protecting and serving all the wonderful history that is here. He was the chief inspiration for the novel I wrote at the millennium about the history, some of which actually appeared five years ago. He had got a new job in a very ancient place, saving the contents of a seventeenth century library. We drove there and spent the most exciting morning of my life, I think just because the friend knew I would like it. He didn’t know about the book or the things I had written in it that I saw that morning. In the book there were seals, in this place there were two wax copies of the great seal of England, just two of many remarkable parallels with my imagined book. There were many other wonderful things, such as gigantic seventeenth century book presses, still full of huge three hundred year old books. There were a lot of very old books, some of them with actual toadstools growing on them. For this reason all the windows were open all the time. It was a very exciting morning and one of the coldest I remember. The heroine of my book was Ethelfleda. She was the real wife of Alfred, the ninth century king who was almost certainly the inspiration for the Legends of the round table. In this collection of the most incredible historical significance was a piece of ninth century writing that I got to hold and look at and take pictures of. I felt as if Ethelfleda had reached out through history and shaken me by the hand.
The only reason this ancient piece of Anglo Saxon writing has survived is because it was used by monks as a backing for a binding of another, much later book. I haven’t studied Anglo Saxon properly, only enough for the characters in my book to speak a bit of dialogue, though I can read the writing out loud. It has been translated by scholars and is part of a collection of stories about the Virgin Mary. Isn’t the writing beautiful?
I wish I had been able to go back to this place but a morning when our friend should probably have been working was more than generous as one of the best gifts I have been given. I shall never forget it.
What a terrible week that brought the deaths of three people who have been very kind to me personally for no reason that I can fathom at all.
There are so many parts of my life that have been put on hold, while I have been caring for my mother, though I would never have met the lovely neighbours if I had not been caring for my mother.
Life is sad and death is long. Friendships are fleeting and happy moments, moments only. Carpe diem, the night will be here soon enough. Before you die your life really will flash before your eyes; it’s called living.
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JaneLaverick.sad