Around the Rowan Tree, Day 16

My father wasn’t an overtly emotional man. It was difficult for him to express feelings and I, being rather like him, understood

Although I had seen death often enough during my years of training as a nurse, this was the first time I had lost anyone close.

I found Alan’s message impossible to take in – beyond tears. “It’s not possible,” I said. “I was just speaking to her last night. She seemed more cheerful than she has been since mother’s stroke.”

“She got up in the night to go to the bathroom and that’s where I found her on the floor, dead.”

I could hear he was having difficulty in speaking. “We’ll be right over,” I said and put down the phone. I won’t linger on the next few dreadful days – the devastated husband – the poor little children.

They say there are many indispensable people buried in graveyards, but perhaps the most indispensable person of all is a mother. A real mother cannot be replaced.

The post-mortem revealed that my sister had died of the current flu virus that was on the rampage that year, killing young people. The verdict was that the virus had gone straight to the heart muscle, paralysing it.

After the funeral was passed, another tremendous task remained to be done. My mother had to be told.

Sympathetic

“Does she really need to know?” I asked the doctor, tears in my eyes.

“Yes, she does,” said the most sympathetic lady doctor. “She really does. Your mother may live for quite a while and she’ll wonder what’s happened.

“I know your mother cannot speak and we are not sure how much she understands, but it might be more than we think. She must be told.”

“But how can I ever do it and I know Dad won’t be able to. He can hardly talk about it to me. He’s never been good with words.”

“I’ll do it,” said the doctor. “I’ll do it. It really would be best coming from me. We’re not sure what reaction she might have and I’ll need to be there.”

And so my mother was told. How much she understood we’ll never know because, apart from the odd word, she never regained her speech.

But we know she understood and when, from time to time, we saw the silent tears cruising down her cheeks, we knew she was thinking of the daughter she had lost and knew there was no real comfort for the loss of a daughter.

My father wasn’t an overtly emotional man. It was difficult for him to express feelings and I, being rather like him, understood.

He needed my company a lot during this period, which was sometimes difficult with all my other commitments.

He also had not been well, had been bothered, off and on, with a bleeding ulcer and was waiting to go into hospital for an operation.

The appointment came up about a fortnight after Jean’s funeral.

“You’ll have to go,” said the doctor gently but firmly. “We don’t want you bleeding to death.” Dad didn’t seem to care one way or the other. Life seemed finished for him anyway.

“Probably won’t come out of hospital,” my father said to me the day before he went in. “Of course you will,” I said, “and Dad, Ronald and I have had an idea. One of the cottages is empty just now.

“How would you like to come and live with us? You would be on your own but close to us. You can’t go on living in that rambling house any longer especially if you need a while to recuperate.

“It’s too far from the shops or the chemist for a start and it would make life easier for me not having to run over to Newport all the time.” This last argument settled it.

Decision

“Well, if I come out of hospital, that might be a good idea. We’ve all got to stand together now, those of us who are left,” he said.

He agreed to us clearing out his house while he was in hospital, taking the decisions as to what needed to be sold.

Ronald was a tower of strength to me over this period. He got the men from the farm over and we all set to. Disposing of a lifetime’s goods and chattels is never easy but perhaps it was easier for us than it would have been for Dad.

We had said: “now Dad, tell us what you particularly want to keep,” and this had been done.

It was at this time that I came across, tucked away in the corner of the attic, a green shoebox stuffed full of every one of the airmail letters I had written to my father and mother.

She had said: “One day you will write a book about your adventure.”

I had never really believed her but now I rather liked the idea.

And so Dad came to stay with us in the small cottage we had made comfortable for him. An arrangement had also been made with Alan and the children. His work was in Edinburgh and he would have to stay there.

Somehow he would manage to look after the children in term time, Catriona had just gone to school and Kenny could go to nursery school.

“If you can manage in term time I’ll take them during the holidays,” I said. And so it was arranged. They came to the farm for most of their holidays in the years before Catriona was old enough to be left on her own.

Tension

What were two more children, I thought. But I used to think it really would have been easier to have had them all the time. They would have fitted in with the others more easily.

Sometimes there seemed to be tension, especially when they first arrived. They were brought up so differently, not accustomed to the rough and tumble and inclined to brood.

But then they were not mine and I knew they were all that Alan had left. He needed them. He was their father, doing his best to work and look after them at the same time.

“Did you like coming down to the farm?” I asked Catriona at a much later date when she was a young lady with a university degree. “Did you find it difficult? Our life must have been so different to yours in Edinburgh and your cousins could be a bit rough at times.”

“Oh no, we loved it,” she said. “We looked forward to it greatly, couldn’t wait.”

More tomorrow.

Margaret Gillies Brown