New start

Today, my 91-year old mother, newly widowed, moves to a new care home in a new town.  She's blind and her hearing is going.  Is she brave!

Aunty Grace's funeral

My much loved and beautiful Aunty Grace died in her sleep a week ago on Friday. She was an inspiration to single mothers because she had been widowed during the war.

She had a career as a chiropodist - she advised my mother on my flat feet. She was a haven from home, when my parents weren't around, somewhere else to go in the school holidays. In my twenties, she told me I could have her gold sleepers if I ever had my ears pierced, so within 24 hours I'd got her to take me to the jeweller's shop where they pierced my ears.

Aunty Grace has lots of grandchildren and even some great grandchildren too. She remarried in 1995, and that was a tale, because when she married her late husband's best man, she insisted that a woman of 80 couldn't be getting married, so they brought the wedding forward before her birthday.

They had the funeral and requiem mass for her today, and it was pleasant to meet her grandchildren and see how many of their neighbours were there too. She and her husband have neighbours who are been incredibly helpful and supportive for years. That's the big society - neighbours like theirs.

Grace was the eldest of four children. My mother mourned:

"I'm the only apple left on the tree"

Grief

My cousin is seriously not well. Some years ago he survived cancer of the kidney, but last week he was in hospital in London for a long operation, then moved to Christie's in Manchester, closer to where he lives. Now the family is asking for prayers for him and for his family, so I fear the worst.

If I hadn't been widowed 11 years ago, perhaps his death would be just a fact to me, and I would feel only sadness, but my experience means that I now care more that his wife-to-be-widow will lose him, and his children, especially his 17 year old son will be unfathered. His wife will become the sole decision maker, independent, lonely with no one to share with, the single carer for their third and youngest child. My husband's wife died when step-daughter #2 was about the same age. She never knew her mother as an adult, a companion and friend. She couldn't show off to her mother all the things that she got to do when she was grown up. I look at my 17 year-old daughter now and know that I must live some more years so that she can live happily, and grow up to what she should grow to be.

Cousin's son should be applying to university next year, perhaps like one of his sisters be considering Oxford. I wonder if he came for the June open days that daughter and I went to. Perhaps the family was too busy dealing with his father's illness. Perhaps he'll delay applying for a year. I don't know if he plans a gap year anyhow. His big sister and I never got to meet in the time that she was at Oxford, but it would be nice to meet him and perhaps offer home comforts if he wants to know. That might add in a more practical way to the prayers.