Marmoreal - Legacy of Love

When the time came to choose a new gas fire and surround for the front room, I knew exactly what I wanted; small, white-ish marble with narrow hearth and mantle piece. It had to be marble, not the composite, marmoreal looking stuff that looks like plastic pretending to be brown onyx. It was going to replace a massive, tiled thing with a sunburst design. Hairline cracks in the hearth were stained black from years of having a coal fire – before our time, but we might wish for it this coming winter – and it stretched too far towards the middle of what is quite a small room. A very efficient, old-fashioned gas fire looked like it didn’t belong, but it really blasted the heat out, excellent when needed and served us well. Replacing it wasn’t a financial priority, however, being a beneficiary in the Will of a departed aunt raised the opportunity. I was very happy to find my preferred fireplace and ‘living gas fire’ which still look great in our lounge twenty-odd years later. Thanks again, Auntie.

Auntie’s passing, very sad as it is with a close relative, left me and my sister with added complications in dealing with her estate. My sister took charge of most of it. It was emotional for both of us and I was carrying the added burden of guilt. I’d always had a lovely relationship with Auntie. Things changed as she got older and I was raising my own family. I didn’t completely fall out with her, it was more of a frustrating situation that I didn’t know how to handle.  She would phone me, to tell me off and shout at me for no valid reason. She lived alone in another town a good hour’s drive away, too far to just pop in, another contentious issue.  I had two small children, doing my best for everyone who needed me, including Auntie, but for her, nothing was good enough and I didn’t have the patience to deal with it. If I had, I might have realised that she probably had a form of dementia and needed the right care that I might have been able to find for her. She died before her behaviour made any sense to me.

Nothing was straightforward. Auntie had been living in a council owned bungalow suited to her needs, which had to be emptied within days, even before her funeral. She still owned a property which had to be sold, but some connected finances needed to be cleared before it could go on the market. Bless my sister, I didn’t have the brain to cope. She kept her head straight through it all. Eventually, and it was ages, everything was signed, sealed and delivered. Job done. I’ve kept all of Auntie’s photos and special things. Her archive of family papers sent me on a genealogy journey that I continue to dip in and out of. And, somewhere on this journey I discovered that she didn’t hate me, she loved me as she always had but she was confused and not herself. With some of the monetary inheritance, we bought a beautiful marble fireplace, the perfect size for our lounge.

I don’t do much grave visiting. I carry memories of my departed loved ones in my head and in my heart, all special people, my family. They are so much more than names carved on tombstones or on the marmoreal kerb-like structure surrounding one of our graves.

I found this poem, which reminded me so much of my late mother until the last line, which clearly refers to a lost love. Read it through my eyes and ignore the last bit.

Your Name

When I can dare at last to speak your name
It shall not be with hushed and reverent speech
As if your spirit were beyond the reach
Of homely merry things, kind jest or game.
Death shall not hide you in some jewelled shrine
Nor set you in marmoreal pomp apart,
You who still share the ingle of my heart,
Participant in every thought of mine.

Your name, when I can dare to speak it, dear,
Shall still be linked with laughter and with joy.
No solemn panegyrist shall destroy
My image of you, gay, familiar
As in old happy days,—lest I discover
Too late I’ve won a saint but lost a lover.

Winifred M Letts 1882 - 1972

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Life Cycle by Jill Reidy

I've written all my life.  I have diaries from when I was six, short stories in exercise books and blogs on all sorts. I even self published a children's novel when I couldn't get a publisher to do it.  So this week's blog should have been a doddle.  It wasn't.  All my stories were too short or too long, so I'm hoping I'll be forgiven for this one, that's slightly longer than recommended.  The idea came to me years ago, when my grandma began to suffer from dementia, and it's only recently that I've put this down on paper.  I've always been fascinated by the passing of time, and especially within families, when roles eventually become reversed. This story has not had an airing before, and it would be good to hear what readers think.

Life Cycle by Jill Reidy

4^thAugust 1949

Dear Mags, 

Thank you so much for the card and pretty bootees.  They will be perfect to keep Jean’s feet warm once the weather turns a little cooler. I can’t believe I’m now actually, officially, a mother!  I hope this letter finds you and Charlie well, and tell Susan we’ll come over as soon as we get straight, and she can meet her little cousin in person.

Love Elsie xx

PS. No, the birth wasn’t pleasant

19^thOctober 1950

Dear Mags,

It was lovely to see you all last Sunday, and thank you again for our tea, which was delicious.  Jean has just started walking with her little trolley!  She’s still a bit wobbly and not always keen to have help, but we’re doing all we can to encourage her to walk independently.  We are keeping the pushchair for now as I don’t think we would get to the grocer’s without it just yet, never mind into town. She’s into everything as you can imagine. I can see we’re going to have to put some locks on the cupboard doors before long.  That’s a job for Bert.

Love Elsie xx

8^thJune 1951

Dear Mags,

Potty training! How on earth did you deal with it?  I’m at the end of my tether, and running out of clean knickers for Jean, who doesn’t seem bothered in the slightest.  She hasn’t got the hang of it at all.  There’s wee all over the house, and I’m worried about the smell.  If you have any advice, please let me know by return of post before we all drown.

Love Elsie xx

PS Nurse at the clinic suggested slapping Jean’s leg every time she loses control, but I’m not very happy doing that – and anyway, it didn’t do any good.

7^thJanuary 1952

Dear Maggie,

Thank you for your letter. I understand your concerns about Jean’s speech, but the nurse really didn’t think there was anything to worry about. She said they all develop at their own pace and Jean has her own gobbledegook language just now.  Most of the time I find it not too difficult to understand.  Nurse seems to think she will be chattering away ten to the dozen before we know it. Susan is obviously much more of a talker than a doer.  I noticed she wasn’t keen to play outside withJean when you were over last week.

Elsie x

PS the nurse has booked Jean in for a hearing test, although she doesn’t think there’s a problem.

18^thDecember 1952

Dear Mags, 

I will be coming on the Number 4 bus on Thursday, about 11am.  Jean loves asking the conductor for her ticket now she has got her grommets in and she can hear properly!  I must admit, it’s made things a lot easier.  It was very frustrating talking to her when she couldn’t hear. By the way, dear, if you have any advice on sharing I’d love to hear it.  Jean had a little friend to play yesterday and refused to share any of her toys or even the sweets they had after tea.  I’ve never felt so embarrassed.  Little Christine’s mother was there, looking very disapproving.  I’m glad to hear that Susan has finally managed to pedal her bike without any help.

Love Elsie xx

19^thAugust 1953

Dear Mags,

I can’t believe Jean will be starting school in only a few more weeks.  She’s still my baby and she can’t possibly be big enough for proper school. I sat last night and sewed her name into every item of clothing she owns! I can’t afford to be buying more if she loses anything.  We’re still on coupons for the time being.  Lord knows when that’s going to end.  How did Susan get on when she first started?  And, more to the point, how were you?  I fear I shall be in floods of tears when I send her in on her first day.

Love Elsie xx

4^thOctober 1953

Dear Mags,

It was lovely to get all your news and to hear how well Susan’s doing at school, now she’s settled.  I’m hoping the same will happen with Jean. The first couple of weeks were dreadful. She had to be peeled off me, screaming. They kept telling me to leave her and walk away, but I just couldn’t do it, not when she was so upset.  They say she’s fine once she’s there but I’m not so sure.  I walked past the playground one day and she was standing by the fence, all by herself. I didn’t let her see me but I can tell you, it broke my heart, Mags.  Hopefully she’ll soon make some little friends, then she’ll be happier, I’m sure. Did you check with Charlie whether you can come over on the 9^th?

Love Elsie

xxx

22^ndAugust 1965

Darling Mags, 

What can I say?  The telephone call was such a shock.  I hadn’t realised Charlie was so ill.  Bert and I will be at the funeral, of course, but we’re having a few problems with Jean at the moment, and I’m not sure if she’ll make it that day.  I’ve told her Susan will be there, but you know what teenagers are like?  Anyway, dear, take care and we’ll see you next Friday. I’ll bring ham sandwiches and a victoria sponge.  Do you want flowers?

All our love, 

Elsie and Bert xx

21^stOctober 1965

Dear Maggie,

I’m sorry to hear you’ve been feeling so low, and I’m surprised you think we haven’t been very supportive. We’ve been over as much as we can, but, as I’ve mentioned before, we’re having problems with Jean.  It was bad enough when she wouldn’t come out of her room and all we could hear was music at full blast, but now she’s never in – out every night, dancing and goodness knows what else.  I put a meal on the table and she just looks at it, as though I’m trying to poison her.  She picks at it for a bit and then disappears upstairs again.  Things were so much easier when she was little.  From your last letter it sounds as though Susan is much more sensible, but even so, sometimes they need a little nudge.  I’d have a word with her dear, if you’re feeling a bit down. She should really be thinking a little more about you.

Love Elsie xx

29^thSeptember 1967

Dear Mags,

The end of an era.  We dropped Jean off at Leicester Poly this afternoon.  It’s a tiny room but she seemed happy enough, in fact, couldn’t wait for us to go.  I cried all the way home but we’re back now and Bert’s putting the kettle on.  It’s just the thought of her there, on her own, knowing nobody.  I wonder how long the peace will last.  

Love Elsie xx

PS I’m sure we’ll miss her, just not the drama!

suem49@btinternet.com

08.09.20012

Hi Sue,

Thanks so much for the warm bed socks and slippers for mum.  They will be lovely and cosy for her as the nights draw in. 

You asked for an update. Where do I start?  I dropped mum off at the Nursing Home yesterday, which was pretty traumatic.  I know she doesn’t really recognise me any more but it was still awful having to hand her over to a complete stranger, and to see her face as I walked straight back out (which is what they’d advised by the way).  I couldn’t see for tears as I drove home.  And then when I got home, I realised I still had her suitcase in the boot of the car – all her clothes neatly labelled with her name, so they don’t get lost.  I started off sewing the labels on, but it took me so long, and made me so sad I bought the iron on ones and raced through it so I didn’t have to think about it.  I couldn’t help remembering all the happy times when we were younger and we used to come and visit you and your mum.  How we used to wind them up and then disappear in fits of giggles.  

Well, there’s not been much to laugh about the last few months, I can tell you.  There was the deafness, which nearly drove me insane.  How dad had lived with it all those years, god only knows.  I’m just glad he’s not here to see mum now.  It would have broken his heart.  Once we got the right hearing aids at least mum could hear, even if she couldn’t understand.  It’s been so hard, Sue.  People don’t realise how awkward she can be, shutting herself in her room and refusing to come out, picking at her food, refusing to hand round her sweets. Then, one day last week, as I drove past the Home, I spotted mum, sat outside on a bench all on her own.  It made me sad to think she hasn’t really got friends any more. I know it’s the illness but that doesn’t always help.

I’ve been taking her on the bus, just for something to do.  She seems to like that, looking out of the window and clutching the ticket as if her life depends on it.  I dread anybody speaking to her as I know she’ll either not answer or come out with some gobbledegook that only I understand, but I suppose, in a way, that’s the least of my worries.

They rang me from the Home yesterday to ask me to take in some incontinence pants.  I know mum had had a few accidents lately, and I must admit, I was worried that the house would stink of pee, but I was really hoping it was just a phase.  Obviously not.  I’ve bought a huge pack and will deliver them tomorrow, along with the clothes.  They also mentioned that mum’s struggling to walk with her frame.  It seems she’s going backwards (metaphorically, not literally, although who knows what’s next!).  She always seemed OK with it when I was in the house, but she’s obviously getting more wobbly.  The trouble is she just won’t accept any help.  I might take you up on that offer of Auntie Maggie’s old wheelchair, if the offer still stands?  It will be handy when I take her out and it means we can at least get into town without too much trouble. 

It looks as though mum won’t be coming back to her house again, which is another big sadness.  I’m going to start tidying up a bit with a view to selling, although that could take a while.  The first job is to remove all the locks we put on cupboard doors to stop her getting to anything like matches or knives.  You just don’t think of all these things before it happens, do you? 

On top of all this, I’ve got Emily (at thirty two!) still at home.  As if we didn’t have enough problems with her when she was in her teens. Now she doesn’t know whether she wants to work in Superdrug or be a nuclear physicist (well, not quite, but you get my drift).  Jason’s daughter, Amber is eleven, going on twenty two, and is already throwing her weight about. When does it ever end?

Anyway, Sue, I’ll sign off now. I’m going to get out the old photo albums and take them in for mum to look through.  You never know, it might just spark a memory.

Things were so much easier when mum was younger.

Looking forward to a catch up very soon.

Lots of love 

Jean xx

PS Sue, I hope I don’t sound too harsh, I’m sure you understand.  Mum looked after me all those years and now it’s my turn to look after her.  

 She was my Mum by Jill Reidy

She was my mum

Many, many years ago

I was inside that sagging belly

My squirming and kicking

Testament to the life within

Those breasts, now flat against a caving chest

Once a comfort, rounded and full, 

Calling to my selfish baby lips 

They nurtured and grew me

The feeble arms, flesh loose 

Had spent nights wrapping babies in their tight embrace

Rested heavy in a tired lap

Strong work-worn hands

Gently wiped away my tears

Now they flutter and shake

Pick endlessly at imaginary fluff 

Hold a plastic cup with lid and spout

Just like mine when I was two  

The swollen feet in cosy slippers 

Once squeezed into stilettos and waltzed around the room 

Ball gown wafting perfumed air 

As I marvelled at the transformed beauty

Now she's my daughter

I guide the cup to thin, parched lips

Wipe a whiskered chin

Tuck in the sheet around her tiny form

Stroke her cheek 

Switch on the lamp she likes left on

Small comfort in a confused and empty life

Tomorrow I will brush her hair

Braid it as she once did mine

Bribe her to replace the dentures

Wash her face and scrub her nails

We'll fight over the incontinence pants 

And putting on her tights

I'll get her in the wheelchair

Take her on the bus

Let her have the ticket as I whisper in her ear 

I'll walk her through the park

Past the flowers whose names are now lost 

In the tangled muddle of an old, old brain

I'll look at the back of her neck

Feel unbelievably sad

And wipe away the tears that just won't stop.

Thanks for reading, Jill

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Missing!

Sad to read that Sir Terry Pratchett has departed the planet this week at the tender age of 66. I hope his spirit has found its way to Discworld. It is well-documented that Terry was suffering from early-onset Alzheimer's dementia, the mind going missing by cruel degrees, a literal lacuna.

Jointly with my brothers, I have lasting power of attorney for my uncle Norman. He is 86, fiercely independent and still lives alone in leafy Leamington, but he, like so many, also suffers from Alzheimer's dementia. He has no short- or medium-term memory left. Tell him something and five minutes later he has absolutely no recollection of it. The frustration for him is that he is still physically fit, but his degenerative loss of memory is making him very vulnerable. Everything is contextual for him now. Each minute of every day is a struggle to make sense of his world because his powers of memory and recall are waning. Some things he does on automatic pilot and then cannot fathom why he is where he is, or what he should do next. He calls it dizziness and likens it to being drunk without the assistance of alcohol. My perception is that he's going missing into an ever-expanding cloud of unknowing. No wonder he's frightened and regards bed as the safest place to be.

We speak on the phone nearly every day, (sometimes several times per day) and I visit him every few weeks, but over the last few months it has become clear when we meet that although he recognises me on some level as someone he's seen before, he no longer remembers my name nor that I am his nephew. He has to be very trusting and I'm always advising him to be cautious. We had to get his phone number changed last year because he'd fallen foul of various financial scamsters.

The last time I visited Norman, I found a message from him on my answerphone when I got back to Blackpool. It said: "Stephen, I thought you ought to know that a nice young man has been here helping me today. I don't know who he was, but he's gone now." You have to laugh or you'd cry. When his own sense of who he is finally deserts him, we'll have to put Norman into a care-home for his own protection. Right now he dreads the possibility. I just hope that when the time comes he won't be mindful of the fact.

This week's poem doesn't attempt to tackle the enormous implications of dementia. I toyed momentarily with the idea of just posting: 'This page left intentionally blank' in the best tradition of IBM training manuals, but figured that was too facetious for such a serious subject.  Instead, here's something I've just completed that tries to encapsulate what I was feeling at this time last year following an abrupt desertion.

Just Like Lost Flight MH370
I thought I knew where this was heading,
plans were filed, co-ordinates set.
Take-off proved exhilarating
and the climb to cruising height was smooth;
altitude maintained with certitude
and latitude allowed for attitude -
but suddenly out of clear blue sky
on a mad March morning
just like lost flight MH370
you disappeared without warning
and left no trace;
the wreckage mine alone.

If I could locate
the flight-recorder of your heart
what secrets would it yield?

The motives your duplicity concealed?
Trails of infidelity?
Inconstancy and shallowness of feeling?
Manipulative meanness?
Ruthless self-conceit?

Dissimulator,
you would never open it -
so how could I?

Fasten your seatbelts. Thanks for reading, S :-)

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Jambo Mwana

Living in the now, the present moment; mindfulness - that's the advice for spiritual fulfilment.  So why do we dwell in the past?  Why relive pivotal moments, in various states of re-imagining, going over the details.  We retell our stories, framing our lives and bringing our character into focus each time.  Some stories go round in our heads, a sort of self-speak, circling like birds of prey and reminding us of something crucial or something we've yet to understand. 


My grandad tells his stories again and again and again.  Stories of his part in the war for the most part.  Occasionally he speaks of his first wife who died young.  Sometimes he speaks about fishing.  Mostly though, he goes over what he saw and what he did during the war.  Many of the stories aren't pleasant but that doesn't stop him bringing them up at parties.  Round and round and round the stories go.  I think it's because there are some actions that you can't justify, can't make peace with.  You can tell those stories again and again but some events are so dark that they scar your consciousness permanently, rendering you unable to live in the moment, always drawing you back to the past. 


Today I visited my grandad, along with two of my sisters.  He told us several stories, moving between fantasy and reality, dwelling in a liminal space between civilization and the wildnerness.  We tried to steer him away from the darkness and into some memories which we could handle.  The poem below reflects one such story.




Visiting Grandad

"You saw a giraffe in the road once, right?"

Wild eyebrow's hooked, a glint of something lost.

"It was hard to see in the thick twilight

At first we thought we were seeing a post.

By the side of the road, so tall and straight.

Kenyan night creeping in like hyenas

Our truck throwing up a cloud in our wake

Soldiers' eyes struggle in lush arenas

Lions watching with their eyes like emeralds

Flies whining at the scent of sweating pores

Whistling Thorn speaks to strangers of reverance

Grasses boast mambas and jackals and boars.

Giraffes still surprise, alone by the road.

Were you there?" "No, it's a story you told."

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