It was going to be a very boring blog this week about gnawing cold seeping into ones bones and the stones of old houses. Also, perhaps, reflections on how personalities affect how one views getting involved with village events, as I snuck back onto the Comité des Fêtes du Vieil Baugé after a six year absence. But then on Friday, my world changed and I became an orphan.
My mother hasn't been particularly well for a long time, and there has been a distinct downward progression over the past 14 months or so, but even so, when you get the call, it is still a shock. On the Thursday I had already been informed of problems with hydration, and while I was concerned, I prepared myself for the usual Friday visit, with expectations divided between sitting and listening to her snoring, or the hydration fluids having done their thing and trying to entertain her with silly little stories of nothing at all. But instead of a Friday afternoon at the nursing home, it was a Friday afternoon at the funeral home, choosing coffins, linings, words for the press notice, and the date and time of the cremation.
They don't hang around over here - it is a legal obligation for ceremonies to be done within 6 days (working days fortunately). Such a difference to England, where for my father, it took I think 5 days to get the documentation that meant we could go to the Registrar and then choose a funeral director, and it was a good month wait before the date of the cremation. It meant we could do something a bit more elegant and considered, but such a long time to get it over. Then of course, there were all those awful Covid ceremonies, with few people and huge restrictions - one neighbour said to me in the queue outside the boulangerie at the time that she felt she had been done out of the community sharing of grief and memories that make a bad day somewhat more easy to endure.
Once you find the number in the local directory and call up, you are enveloped in a well oiled process of professionals, who communicate amongst themselves to get everything done with minimum angst. It might be all new and bewildering to you, but to them it is totally normal. While it felt like an endless process on Friday afternoon, actually it took less than 2 hours to get things to a point where we now just wait for a call from the celebrant, and turn up on the day.
While my mother spent the last 20 years of her life in France, a country that she loved passionately, she was born in the Black Country and survived the War and air raids without recourse to evacuation. With her school certificate and a shorthand and typing diploma in her purse, she headed to London to seek her future, shedding her accent somewhere around Watford Gap I would guess. She did bits and bobs of modelling but her main role in London was secretarial, including time working for the massive organisation that ensured the Festival of Britain happened in 1951. It was in their offices that she first saw and met my father, and they married in 1953.
After 10 years in London, with two smallish children, they moved to Romford Cottage in Pembury, and for the next 40 years that was her home. She created a loving space, where there was always cake and/or flapjack in a tin, a bottle of wine open, and a tasty dinner could be conjured out of the contents of the store cupboard and the fridge. She engaged in village life, reluctantly at first - this was not someone who wanted to be a stalwart of the WI - but then passionately, fighting inappropriate development plans, and was parish councillor for a while too, responsible for keeping footpaths open. At 50, she needed to go back to work, but electric typewriters and computers were not for her, and she did a catering qualification before doing office and directors' table catering in the City of London.
She retired earlier than she wanted, but was able to spend more time with my father and enabled him to stay at the Cottage until just a couple of days before his death. She didn't then realise that she would have to wait 27 years to join him. She tried not to be in too many paintings but there are odd sketches when Dad was itching to draw.
The Cottage was a lovely home, but impractical, not least as it was miles from anything useful, and when we decided to move to France, Mum jumped ship first. She used our house as a base for finding her own piece of France, settling on a four bedroom townhouse in Chinon. She loved that house and made it her own, although she hadn't really been upstairs for about 7 years, and then only in company, restricted by failing joints to the ground floor.
She tested the French health and social care system to its limits - and it is a marvellous system. Now she is, I hope, at peace.
There may well not be a blog next week.
Comments