Waiting..........!

~





Do you ever find that your days seem to be focussed on nothing but waiting - for goods to arrive, for things to happen, for people to get in touch, for appointments at hospitals etc?


In the past few weeks I have been waiting for:

• Some goods I ordered on line which didn't arrive, and when I contacted the firm they said they were posting a second lot and those haven't arrived either, and it's now two and a half months since I first ordered.
  
  
• Something I bought on Ebay from a seller in the US which he said would take 2-3 days to arrive in the UK. After 5 weeks it was returned to the seller because he had addressed it wrongly. When he posted it again it took 6 business days and one weekend.



• The next email in an uncomfortable exchange of correspondence I am having with someone with whom I am in disagreement.
  
  
• My eldest son in Australia to fix the dates of his next visit to the UK with his family, after hinting months ago that they might come during 2009. They only get over every three years or so. At last I know they are coming in April - yippee!




• A lab report on a biopsy I had done on 23rd January. I know some abnormality was found but I don't yet know what it is or what treatment I may need. I am fairly confident that it is nothing serious, but am worrying that treatment might interfere with my son's visit
  

STRESS! STRESS! STRESS! STRESS! STRESS!

Motherlove

If I do not write often in my blog about my sons and grandchildren, it is not because they are not important to me. On the contrary, they bring colour, drama and joy into my life, and there is so much I would like to write about. But some of them do not care to have their lives exposed on the world wide web, and do not want to have pictures of their young children posted either, and I must respect their wishes. But not writing about them or posting their pictures is a considerable frustration to me.


I think I may allow myself, however, to post this poem about them which I wrote many years ago, but which I would write again today:

They are great big lads
My four boys,
Bonny and brawny.
They have to bend
To hug their Mum.
Such pride I feel
In each of them
For his own specialness.
And when they gather
All at once
To celebrate
Some family event,
Then memory flows
And laughter breaks
In great explosions.
All the past
In which I played
My part
Is laid before me -
And my heart bursts
With joy.

I fell in love today

The most delightful young man arrived this morning to survey my house for cavity wall insulation. He was easy and chatty and helpful and nice - and good to look at. In fact, when he mentioned his wife I almost felt disappointed. For two pins, Judith, I thought to myself, you would have started flirting with him!

After a while it dawned on me that his particular appeal was that he looked and talked very like my eldest son in Australia. That of course only increased my desire to fling my arms round him. In the end I felt I should tell him why I was possibly gawping at him more than might be expected from an old woman. He took it very generously, and I continued to flutter and flap, with my normal business persona gone right out of the window. (Amongst other things I tried to make instant coffee for him with the stuff I use for filter coffee --- yuck!)

Sadly he will not be coming back to do the insulation, and when I finally shut the door on him I could not suppress a small sob - he had been so like my distant son.

I wonder how long this insulation will last before it needs redoing........................

Collections

I have been selling some bits and pieces to a dealer this morning, and it got me thinking about collections. My earliest and longest lasting one has been cows : it started with Staffordshire cow creamers and eventually extended to cows in absolutely any material. They are mostly pottery, but also brass, glass, wood, clay, gold, silver, and even wax!

But I now have so many that there is nothing like the pleasure in them that I had with the first two or three acquisitions, so hard come by because I had little money to spare - £3 I think I spent on my first one! I can remember so vividly the look of those cows on the high cornice round the large bed sitting room that I rented from friends in Maida Vale’s ‘Little Venice’; and I still feel the buzz I got from knowing I had sought them out and bought them, and had given them a home, in my first home on my own.

It was a marvellous Victorian room, big enough for two single beds, with built-in cupboards all along one wall, including a washstand space with marble slab which I used as my kitchen worktop. It had a huge bay window with a raised floor, so that it could have made a stage if I had wanted to perform something, and it overlooked the garden which had a beautiful magnolia tree in the centre of the lawn.

I remember one spring evening sitting at a table in the bay, eating an omelette and salad supper cooked on my gasring, and drinking wine with a man I thought I would marry, while we watched the magnolia glimmering in the falling dusk. Life was so good: I was living in the capital city with all its interest and excitement, I was supporting myself - well, up to a point, though I think my Pa paid me an allowance as well - I lived with people I cared about, I was in love ........... and I was collecting Staffordshire pottery cows!

Eheu fugit irreparabile tempus !

[This is my oh-so-kitch candle-wax cow figure!]

Outrage...!!!

Somebody stole my balloon!

After my birthday lunch last Sunday, I brought home the Happy Birthday banner and the 80th birthday balloon, and put them up in my glass porch. (Nothing like a bit of showing off, eh?)

When I came home from visiting my family in the village this afternoon, the balloon had gone. It would not have floated away if the door was left open, as it had an anchor weight, and there was not enough gas left. So it must have been taken.

I found that I was very upset by this. (Picture it: an 80-year-old grandmother sniffling because someone pinched her balloon!) I did not mind the loss of the balloon so much, as I was about to take the decorations down anyway - a week is enough I think. But it was the thought that someone would be prepared to do that to an old person which upset me. And they not only stole it from me, but also from Sarah Jane, who put so much loving care into decorating the room at the restaurant for me, and who will ask where it is when she comes tomorrow.


So after a week of being a child again at heart, I shall have to go back to being a grown-up, and pull myself together!

Nothing under the beds

As the day draws to an end, this seems like a good moment to take stock ~ not of all those years, but of where I am now.

The past 12 months have been difficult and disturbing, in unexpected ways. A year after my husband's death I continue to grieve for the failure of our life together. And although we had lived apart for 20 years, I have been feeling strangely without purpose, now that he is no longer around. I have been surprised at just how much a person becomes part of you when you have been married for 50 years, and have been in, and out, of each other’s lives for 60. But he was, after all, the one I chose, and the only one.

I find I am immersing myself in projects centred on Michael, such as the research I am doing into his family history. I guess this expresses a need in me to both mourn and celebrate him still. I am doing this by putting my research onto a family tree website, with photographs, so that our sons and grandchildren will be able to see who he was, and where he came from.

All of this seems fairly positive, even when it is uncomfortable for me, as it recognises Michael 's value, and the value of the 29 years that we had together with our family; I feel that in some sense it is restoring a balance.

But I am also feeling that I have moved up a place in the queue for “the pearly gates”, that my relatively good health is less reliable, and that I should be putting my affairs in better order, for the sake of my executors. This has prompted me to sort out my business papers into a tidy, up-to-date row of ringbinders, and also to undertake a major programme of house clearance and chucking out.

Possessions and clutter can feel like a heavy burden at times, and I am a lifelong hoarder and collector, not only of objects of interest and appeal, but also of “might-be-usefuls”. But now suddenly I have started to let go of stuff. I seem no longer to have the urge to keep things, just in case, in some unforseeable future, they might serve a new purpose. I can see clearly and cheerfully what I am not likely to need, especially when I have not needed it for the past 20 or 30 years anyway! This is remarkably freeing - I feel lighter every time I throw something away - or better still recycle it.

Hence the title of this blog: my aim is to end up with nothing stored under any of my beds any more. (And no unresolved relationship issues pushed there out of mind either!)

My brain has become frenetically active in the past year, which seems likely to be a counterbalance to this increased sense of my mortality. The genealogical research I am doing is fascinating and compulsive, and gives rise to many ideas for pieces to write. But my mind darts from one idea to the next, embracing the new while longing to pursue what is already under way, but remains unfinished.

So the past year has been sad and reflective, but busy and creative as well, and I think that on balance the positive is winning. And yet ..... I am worried by a growing inclination to stay at home and live life in my head and in my computer, rather than make the effort to go out and socialise. It feels kind of weird. It's almost as though I am not quite the same person that I was two years ago, or not quite in the same world.

Is this the effect of bereavement? Or of ageing? Or simply of being a disgraceful old woman?!!

[The snowdrops were painted by Julie Oakley. You can see more of her work on her website.]

No recall

I hear voices from the past
Telling me that I was wrong
And I'm listening at last
To the meaning of their song

And I'm feeling so much pain
For the hurt that I caused you
If I had the time again
How much better I could do

But the saddest thing of all
And the hardest pain to bear
Is to know there's no recall
For you are no longer there

Now we shall always be together

Some years ago, when I had recently joined Growing Old Disgracefully, (about which I wrote here), I attended a workshop about funerals, and about creating one's own alternative celebration. The workshop was just for members of our Network, which made it easier for us to trust each other and take full advantage of the opportunity. In the event we were greatly moved by the experience, and formed a very close bond. After the workshop I wrote this:

We met, some friends, some strangers,
to look, with courage, at our dying;
to consider our leave-taking
and how it should be marked.

We sought the meaning of our lives
that others might celebrate them.
We touched the pain of things awry
and longed to set them right.

We shared our fears, our feelings,
and with paper, paint and willow
made expressions of ourselves.
We wept, and laughed, and hugged.

We joined our hands beneath the sky,
with lights, and words, and music,
rosemary and forget-me-nots.
We set our spirits free.

We should not travel on alone;
we should always be together.
Before, and after, we have gone,
we shall always be together now.

~~~~~~~~

The workshop was run by Welfare State International, "a collective of radical artists and thinkers who explored ideas of celebratory art and spectacle". Unfortunately the original organisation came to an end in 2006, but has been succeeded by Lanternhouse International, whose projects "projects are celebrations, performances and rites of passage, exploring the poetry of the everyday and the paradoxes of contemporary culture". It is worth having a look at the archive website and the new one if you are interested.

My tribute to Michael

I haven't written much about Michael here, because we lived apart in recent years, and he would not really have understood about blogging, and so it did not seem appropriate while he lived. But I would like now to share something of him with you. Here is what I said in my tribute:

Michael and I first met at a Christmas Eve party in 1946, and I fell in love with him there and then.

For 60 years we have been part of each other’s lives, and I can scarcely remember a time when Michael was not a determining factor in what I was thinking or doing. I cannot imagine that this is ever going to change.

In these last sad months, while I have cared for him, as he has cared for me in the past, I have come to know Michael in a way that I did not do before, and that is very important to me. Even at the last he has added value to my life.

A man of determined independence, who gave freely to others but would ask nothing for himself, Michael met the indignities of his final illness, not only uncomplainingly, but with spirit and humour, refusing to become any less of the man that he has always been.

He spoke of me to others as “My Judith”, and despite his confusion, from time to time he would ask me: “And how are you doing in ‘all this’, dear – are you coping?” I feel his love for me more strongly now than ever.

Seven years ago, when the whole of our family came together for Michael’s birthday, we made a special book for him, in which each of us wrote our personal tribute. I cannot do better than read to you now what I wrote for him then:

Michael ~ For me you have always been ~

constant and dependable; patient, generous and forgiving.

You have supported and encouraged me in being my own person.

You have been strong for me where I have been weak, but prepared to follow where I could lead.

Together we have raised four splendid, loveable and loving sons, and reliably and equably, you have maintained the fabric of our family life.

For all of this ~ and for being hardy and long-lasting ~ I love you.

I missed you this morning ...

Last weekend I unexectedly found myself driving through the little mill town in Cheshire where we lived from 1960 to 1970. It turned out to be a very affecting experience.

I missed you this morning when I went back to Bollington
Chasing up the shadows of a time long gone
Missed you in the place where we made our first home together
Still looks the same though it’s forty years on

Missed you when I drove past The Olde Cock and Pheasant
Nice drop of Boddington’s - your favourite beer
Then past St Oswald’s where the boys were christened
The school and the corner shop - they’re both still there

Missed you when I stopped by our little farm cottage -
An Aga in the kitchen and nappies on the rail
And then at the big house we had to move on to -
The babies kept coming - now it’s up for sale

Missed you in the High Street where the shops are familiar
Then under the aqueduct and up by The Mill
Along the canal bank where the ducks are still squawking
And looking for White Nancy up on Kerridge Hill

You weren’t there to share with me our own special memories
I left it too long and you weren’t there to share
I missed you this morning when I went back to Bollington
I missed you... I missed you... you should have been there…..

[Local landmark White Nancy]

Do not resuscitate

This is a distressing subject. I need to write about it because I am still distressed by what happened. And I think it may be helpful to others in a similar situation. But you don't need to read it, so give it a miss if you'd rather.

When my husband was in hospital for one of his fairly frequent recent visits, he agreed with his doctor that his notes should carry the letters ‘DNR’, for “do not resuscitate”. We were all relieved that he agreed to the notation, as we knew he was living on borrowed time, and that with his age and present state of health, resuscitation would be likely to leave him in a much worse state than before. Nobody talked to us, however, about what would happen in this connection if he died at home, as he hoped to.

When I got the call from his carer, to say that she thought he had gone, but had called the paramedics anyway, I was over at his house within 15 minutes. I made straight for the stairs so that I could be with him, but the paramedics turned me away, saying "We are doing all we can for him". The significance of those words did not register with me straightaway, and it was some time before I realised that they were trying to resuscitate him.

My pleas to them to stop were useless. The fact that nobody wished him to be resuscitated, including he himself, counted for nothing. Here in the UK, unless there is a letter from a doctor written within the previous two weeks, stating that the patient need not be resuscitated, the paramedics are legally obliged to continue trying, until not only the heartbeat and breathing have stopped, but the last electrical signal from the brain as well. If they have had no success after a certain time, they must take him to hospital where doctors can make the decision. Once I understood this I rang our GP at once; but thankfully, by the time he arrived, after half an hour's strenuous efforts to revive him, my husband had finally 'died' in their terms.

I can understand the reason for such safeguards, but I found it excessively painful at an already painful time. If he had been in hospital they would have let him go, and I could have sat beside him and held his hand. And perhaps while his brain was still bravely sending out its signal, although his heart had stopped, it might also have recognised in some little corner that I was with him. Instead I was barred from his presence, because in the bathroom where he lay there was not room for me as well as the paramedics.

And if it had been me who found him at home, and not his carer, perhaps, knowing his wishes, I could have sent for his GP instead of the paramedics, and we could have been peacefully together at the very last. It is something to think about.

[Edited 06.01.08 - I deleted this post for a while and wrote an alternative version, as I felt it was too personal. Now I have decided to restore it as the truer version. I have left the alternative version too (see 12th February), as the two together have some interest as an exercise in writing about one experience in different ways.]

Another bereavement

I had felt that I did not have the heart to decorate this year, but today, my Christmas hairdo done, my presents all wrapped, and my youngest son coming to stay for the holiday, I decided that I would make the effort. The first decoration to go up every year was always this collection of red and silver baubles, which I put together myself, and which was my absolute favourite of all. The big balls, inherited from a much-loved aunt in 1981, were real glass ones, of which the larger measured almost 4” across.

Alas for the shaky hand of age, which made my aim unsure: the arrangement slipped from my fingers and crashed to the floor, with the result that you can imagine. I became transfixed as I waited to see if I could brush aside this new loss and move on, or if it would prove to be just one thing too many to bear. The idea of sharing here a picture from an earlier Christmas, has helped me over the worst, but I am still not sure how it will go.

How vulnerable we are to trivial losses when already weakened by significant ones.

Bereavement

I find myself in a sort of trough out of which I am unable to climb - a place where the spirit seems to have drained out of me, leaving me unable to resume the activities that made up my life before my husband's death. Somehow the blogging kept me going during these past difficult months, but now I am finding it really hard to connect again and write.

I didn't think about bereavement in advance, although I am usually one to think - and worry! - ahead. There was time enough to do so, but caring for Michael was sufficient unto the day, and I was aware only that I would be thankful for him when he was finally at rest, and for myself and the family when the burden of care was lifted from our shoulders. I did not expect to be deeply affected by his going, as we had lived apart for more than twenty years, and I did not think to miss him as I do.

So I have been surprised by this sense of emptyness and aimlessness, and the sudden feeling of being alone when, I now realise, I was not alone before. Of course, after knowing each other for 60 years, the fabric of our lives is inevitably made up of threads that we have woven together, as well as individually, and that will never change. Thankfully, we remained good friends throughout the years, and so, in its own rather unusual way, our marriage remained intact, as I had always hoped it might.

But there has been more than just the final parting, the knowledge that we shall weave no more of the fabric together. While living again in Michael’s world for a time, I have learned things that I had not been aware of before, because he was never able to talk of them to me, and these have had a profound if complex impact.

I learned from the congregation of his church how readily he gave his love, his time and effort, and his possessions for the benefit of others, and how they all loved him.

I learned from children and adults alike how much his hugs had meant to them – hugs which he had never seemed able to give to me in the same spontaneous way.

I learned from his good friend and neighbour how much he missed me after we had separated, although he had made no word of protest at my going. And his pain became my pain, and I felt remorse.

I learned from the young woman who cleaned and cared for him (and who was like a granddaughter to us both), how often, right up to the end, he asked her to “Look after my Judith for me”.

All this has revived old pains from the past. But it has meant too that, through others, I have at last been able to understand the full extent of Michael’s love for me, and in doing so I feel my love for him renewing itself.

But it leaves me with a new pain, as I wonder how two people who loved each other could nevertheless have missed each other somehow, on the road through marriage, and ended up at different destinations.

Have I got it wrong?

The impact of my husband's funeral on my life has been unexpected in many ways. It was a sad but wonderful day, in which his own family and the family of his church came together, all contributing, all much moved by the occasion, and well pleased to be united at this time, though they were not, sadly, in his lifetime.



At the age of 16, I had found it impossible, logically, to believe any longer in the Christian god, and have since then called myself an agnostic, whilst leaning from time to time towards a number of other belief systems. This difference between us might have been an insuperable obstacle, but somehow we made it work, at least while we raised our children, though I believe it was always a great sadness for my husband that I could not share his faith.


Over the years, I have often been aware of how much was missing from my life by not being part of a church family. With the funeral, during the arrangements, on the day, and afterwards, this has been brought into really sharp focus, as I came to appreciate fully just how much his church meant to him, and how much he was valued by the church.



Can we not create such communities around other focal points? We can be good, caring, generous and honourable people without being Christians, and yet we do not seem to find the same all-embracing commitment, cohesiveness and purposefulness in, say, the Women’s Institute, or other social bodies of people. Or do I do them an injustice?


Some of our friends left the funeral saying that they wanted one just like it! What I do know is that there is no local community at present which will join with my family to celebrate my life, as this church community has done for my husband. Mind you, he was a very special man, in ways which I could not aspire to, but even so ………

Timothy grass

Sometimes the tapestry of one’s life's memories seems to conceal too many sharp needles of sorrow, for missed opportunities, for unfinished business, or for useless and heartbreaking tragedies.

The last two days have been extraordinary for me in that respect: I found an old photograph of an American medical student I knew in Geneva, and hardly had I finished writing about it, when I opened an old wallet and out fell this piece of Timothy Grass (Phleum pratense). Now it’s hard to believe, but I really think that this dried and pressed remnant has been with me for some 50 years, since the time when I knew a young man called Timothy, and picked the grass for his sake.

I was staying with my cousin Mirabel in the Clee in Shropshire. She and her husband lived on an old farm, no longer a working farm, but they had a good friend Tim who worked a sheep farm in a neighbouring village. Ever attentive to my welfare, my cousin determined that I should meet this young man, as she was sure we should like each other – and indeed we did. We became quite close for a while and several times I spent a few days on his farm, when visiting my cousin. It was there, in one of his fields, that I picked the piece of grass that bore his name.

Tim was dark haired and good looking, sturdy and tough, but slightly handicapped by a forshortened arm, due to a clumsy forceps delivery at birth which had damaged his shoulder. This did not seem in any way to interfere with his competence as a farmer however, nor did it make him any less attractive in my eyes. But alas, it may have been instrumental in his tragic death at an early age.

We went our separate ways eventually, and each of us got married and had families. It was some years later that I heard from my cousin that his life had been lost, when he swam out to sea to help some people who were in trouble in rough weather. The attempt cost him his own life, and a good, kind, courageous man was gone.

So I shall not throw away my piece of Timothy Grass.

Fifty years to say goodbye

I came across a photograph of an old boy friend yesterday, and it reopened a small wound which had left a permanent scar on my heart. Due to an idiotic mistake which was never explained, we parted without saying goodbye, in a way which was not only frustrating but painful, as it left each of us feeling let down by the other. But he was a good guy and would not have done that to me, I am sure, and I would not have had him think that of me for the world either.

It was during my time in Geneva, working for the World Health Organisation. I shared a flat with a girl friend, and across the road from us lived two American medical students. They were Jewish, and had come to the medical school in Geneva because at that time it was difficult for Jews to get places at the schools in the US. The four of us got on well and saw a good deal of each other, and for Sy and me there was soon more than friendship between us.

By the beginning of 1956 however, I was preparing to leave Switzerland and return to the UK, as my two-year contract was up. The man I would eventually marry had stopped off in Geneva to visit me on his way home from India on leave, and I was pretty certain that I was going to say “yes” to him this time. I explained this to Sy, and as we had both known that our relationship would not be long-term, there was no difficulty about agreeing to say a sad but friendly goodbye over dinner, one evening before I left for home. So we set a date and a time, and fixed a place to meet in the centre of the town.

The evening came and off I went to the rendezvous. I was not late – (I rarely am) – and I waited happily for a while... and a longer while ... and an even longer while ... until eventually, in disbelief, I rang the flat and spoke to his flatmate. He said that Sy had gone off to meet me as arranged, and he could not understand that we hadn’t found each other. He would come along to where I was still waiting, though, and take me out to dinner himself.

Sy rang me next day and said he had been where we had arranged, and where was I? I said that I had been there, and where was he? We checked what the arrangement for meeting had been; there seemed to have been no confusion, and we could not understand how we had missed each other. It was too late by then to make another date before I left, and so we never saw each other again – our last contact was that unhappy exchange on the phone, when I could hear the hurt in his voice, as I am sure he heard it in mine. Good mates should not part like that - it still hurts.

EPILOGUE

A moment ago, just for fun, or sentiment, or curiosity, or whatever, I put Sy’s full name into Google Search, and came up with a listing in the digital library catalogue of the University of California, San Francisco: it was his doctoral thesis written in Geneva (in French) in 1958, two years after we parted there. It has to be him, I cannot believe anything else. I was strangely moved by this, as though we had touched hands again, even managed to say our last goodbye – at last! It was like laying flowers on a grave that one should have visited 50 years ago.

Vespalgia 2001

I began this five years ago, caught in a moment of yearning and loss by a TV programme ~ I think it belongs with my post on Cartoons & Romance.

I watched a short film about the Vespa scooter this morning – English made in 1999, but with much lyrical and evocative comment by Italians. Oh! the clutch of nostalgia – for the machine, for my youth, for high old times in Geneva in the 1950s. I hardly realised until this moment how much I loved my Vespa, the mobility and freedom it gave me, the jaunts with my flat-mate, the sheer mechanical pleasure of driving, so much greater than I felt later in a car.



Looking back on my two years in Switzerland, working with the World Health Organisation, it seems that that was the real me – the me that my therapist tells me is still trying to get out of the woman I am now in my 70s. I ‘had a ball’ there, a fling, the time of my life. It was magic, imagination, romance, excitement and adventure. It was being liberated and fancy free, sexy and attractive.

It was a lot of men, too - a girl had to keep her head in the international community out there. So many of the fellas who acted as though they were single were actually on postings away from home and family, and it was not a group in which to find reliable husband material. And most of the Swiss boys were put off by the enormous salaries we earned. So I came home after two years to get married to an old sweetheart, but there is still a small unassailable corner of my heart reserved for Alex, son of Russian emigres but adopted by Swiss parents, who worked like me with the World Health Organisation.

I met him at a Hogmanay party and asked him to dance. He was bear-like and almost ugly, but there was something about him..... There was an initial misunderstanding, involving a struggle in a dark room, in the course of which I kicked over a drum kit waiting to be played by the back-up band. But I managed to make my point, and it wasn't long before we negotiated terms.
He was a man who wrote me poems, drew cartoons on paper tablecloths, told me dirty jokes, and had some very dubious friends. A man who was deeply moved when I first called him ‘cheri’; who scoffed when I told him that I wanted to make love to the sound of Scheherazade, the music of his fellow countryman, but agreed eventually that I was right. His wooing was so varied, so scurrilous, so romantic, so full wit, of soul and of angst, that I was captivated. We could never have lived together, but he is the only man of whom I can say that his spirit soared with mine.

Cartoons and romance

When I say 'romance', I don't mean ‘love’, the hard-working, hard-wearing, enduring emotion with which we make relationships work. I see it more as something spontaneous, light of touch and all too often ephemeral. I was lucky enough to experience it, long before I thought of settling down. It was fleeting, and ended with sadness, but it enriched my life and is not forgotten. It also left me with a collection of cartoons which I treasure, and I am posting here as a tribute to the young artist, who is now long gone.


I met Arsene when I visited my penfriend in France in July 1947. He was one of her group of friends in the small town where she lived, and because she had a 9 to 5 job during the week, she asked him to show me the sights of Paris, where he worked and had a studio flat. As far as I remember I stayed in a b&b or hotel. I was 19, and it was not a world in which anything else would have been considered.




He was a freelance political cartoonist and we used to start the day going round various newspapers to sell his drawings. Then we went sight-seeing, and in the evening went to the cinema or the theatre. It was a heatwave summer and we stopped for endless fruit juices at pavement cafes, and often he would cook us an omelette and salad for lunch in his flat. The visiting card is a souvenir of all we saw and did, which he handed to me in the train as I left Paris for England.




When we met he was already engaged, although his fiancee was abroad at that time, and I had already met and fallen in love with the man I was to marry nine years later. So we knew we were not going anywhere together; I recall a kiss and cuddle or two, but they were about as innocent as you can imagine.
Over the next five years we wrote to each other from time to time, and he was unashamedly sentimental about the days we spent together in Paris. He drew me many cartoons, and often illustrated his letters with the most charming designs.



And then came the ‘faire-part’ – the traditional French black-bordered notice of a death and funeral. He had died at the age of 32, a talented,
imaginative and sensitive young man, leaving a wife recovering from polio and two young daughters. I never knew why he died. I wrote to my penfriend but did not hear from her. It was hard to bear, although he was little to me by then but an occasional reminder of an enchanting interlude. I still grieve for his going.

Remembering my mother...

Walking in the early evening sunshine just now I was reminded of one of the nicest things my mother used to do for me. When I was living and working in London as a young woman, she would pick primroses and snowdrops from the banks of the hill on top of which we lived in the country, pack them in wet moss in a tin, wrap them securely and send them to me through the post. The arrival of these moist and sweetly smelling cullings from my home ground restored me in heart and spirit and gave me courage for another year.

At the beginning of the war, when I was 11, we had moved from Birmingham to a small village seven miles from Worcester. From that time on the countryside seemed an essential part of my being, although the search for interesting jobs took me to London, where the stimulation and resources of a capital city became equally important to me. But at times of stress and unhappiness I would often take flight to the country again to recover my equilibrium.

The trouble with old people (2)

The programme which I wrote about yesterday gave rise to several thoughts about my own care in the future, if a time comes when I can no longer live independently. I made notes and here is the message I want to leave for my sons:

TO MY SONS

If I become incapable of looking after myself:

I would not expect any of you to take care of me in your own home. You must be committed to the future, rather than the past; that is nature’s way, however hard.

But if I have to go into care, please don’t abandon me there. If I have not been able to arrange my own care, try to put me somewhere where you can visit me regularly, if not necessarily often.

Remember I am still the person you have known all your life and who has loved you all your life, and you are likely to be the most important thing in my life at this stage.

Don’t lie to me and say I will get better and come home if I won’t. The truth between us can be used positively, while lies are more likely to create suspicion than to reassure.

If I no longer have my wits:

DON’T let anyone leave me parked in front of a TV which is permanently on, and over which I have no control. The end of life needs to be faced with a quiet mind. The playing of good music on occasions may be a good thing however.

If you talk to others in my presence, do so as though I can hear what you say – who knows, maybe I can.

Just be content to be with me at times – you don’t have to talk all the time to be companionable and give comfort, and it will take so much of your energy if I cannot respond.

At the end:

If you possibly can, be there with me and hold my hand, so that I can feel your loving presence as I go.