The Boggy Brae: Number 64: the end of an era

This blog post came about after the final days and death of our mother. The "we five" referred to are her children. For the purposes of this blog I've devised pseudonyms using, initially, initials, if you see what I mean. They are Jed, Hum (me), Smudge (a very friendly Smudge; her initials are SMJ), Jig & Teedee. Sibs, if you read this and wish to have your blog name changed, let me know.

We five in age and height order in 1965

We five in the same order in 2019

We five being a little disorderly

Part one: a bit of background

We moved into Number 64 the day before my twelfth birthday. We had lived in an old farmhouse, rented, for two years before that when we first moved from Yorkshire to Lancashire. Dad had started his new Lancs job in the summer term but had not found anywhere for us to live. After having to cope with five kids by herself from Sunday evening to Friday evening for that term, Mum told Dad to get a tent because we were all coming with him by the beginning of the autumn term. He found a house to rent.

It was great. There was an old orchard, overgrown with rosebay willowherb and nettles, and a roofless barn and pigsty for us to play in. Beyond the orchard were cow fields with ponds and, slightly up what was called a hill in those parts, a wood. Across the lane at the front there was a field containing horses, and between the lane and the field was a ditch that we often played in. We learned about water surface tension in that ditch and the field ponds. The idea was to wade in slowly until it was only surface tension stopping the water cascading into your wellies.

By the time she died Mum was in her fifty-second year of living at Number 64, the house our parents bought after two years in the old farmhouse. Dad had died half way through those years and both our widowed grandmas before him. There were accumulations of stuff from both grandmas' houses. As each of we five kids grew up and left home there was more and more room to hoard everything from safety pins and old keys to candles, kettles and rusty tools that no-one used. Both our parents were adolescent when WW2 started so they were well trained in saving anything that might be useful (MBUs).

Anything. Like old rope off the beach. Dad collected this and stowed it and a massive rope fender or two in the garage and what we called the boiler room. The farmhouse had coke fired central heating from a stove in the dining-room. The first winter at Number 64 was a shock after two years with warmth so the old wash-house of Number 64 was used for the gas fired central heating boiler my parents had installed during our second summer.

One day someone whose car had broken down knocked at the door to ask if Mum had, by any chance, some old rope so he could be towed. "As it happens," she said, "yes, I have." It was sad that Dad had not lived to see this day but the story afforded the rest of us much amusement.

Part two: funeral and wake

After Mum died my sister, 'Smudge'–and when Smudge left to return to Norfolk, my eldest daughter, 'Rye'–and I decided to stick around for Teedee's sake. Teedee, the youngest of we five, had been Mum's carer for six years. I had felt for a long time that Mum's death would hit him hardest because of this. His relationship with her was different from those of the rest of us in any case because he had nearly died twice, once with peritonitis when he was ten, and then again in his twenties after a devastating road accident.

Since Mum died on Maundy Thursday and since a coroner's inquest was required because nobody had witnessed the fall that ultimately caused her death, there was some delay in the death certificate being issued. I say ultimately because she seemed over two weeks in hospital to be progressing satisfactorily from the broken ribs she sustained when she fell on the stairs at home, but the day before we expected her to be discharged she suffered a serious brain bleed and died just over forty-eight hours later unconscious and unresponsive and provided with end of life care. The hospital staff were wonderful.

We also wanted to delay her funeral until Jig, middle brother, and his wife could fly over from upstate New York. Jig is an academic and early May is a very busy end of term time for him. These 'creases' having been ironed out, the funeral and wake took place four weeks after Mum died. There were tears during the funeral service, laughter during the wake, much reminiscing, and many hugs.

A few pics from the wake:

We five plus what Teedee calls "relevant others"
including six of Mum's fourteen grandchildren

Wake fun with one of Mum's seven (so far) great grandchildren.
Two others came but left before this because they'd had a long, exhausting
wait on the motorway the night before while an accident ahead of them was cleared up

More "relevant others" including Mum's last remaining sibling,
only uncle to we five, on the right.

I had been given some days of compassionate leave when the message came about Mum's serious brain bleed (traumatic subdural haemorrhage) but I had also already booked off the following week. DerbyshireDaughter (new pseudonym based, inititally, on her initials, is Rye) and my grandsons were going to come up to the Boggy Brae for a few days. In the circumstances that was cancelled and my grandsons' other grandparents stepped into the breach so that Rye could join me at Number 64.

Part three: candles, keys and kettles

Before that though, Smudge and I began some decluttering. As Mum's blindness (macular degeneration and glaucoma) and later dementia increased, so did clutter though perhaps growing up during WW2 had made her more of a saver of Things That Might Be Useful One Day (MBUs) than she might have been otherwise.

Smudge began with the cupboard that had been our parents' entire kitchen furniture other than a sink and a cooker when they were first married. She hauled it out of the pantry, scrubbed away the decade or three's worth of gunk and cobwebs from behind and under it, binned, among other things, a tall tower of apple rice pudding tubs, and generally made that low space in the pantry neat and tidy. One noticeable consequence of this was that it was possible to use the bread bin as a bread bin again rather than as a storage place for plastic bags and other non-bready detritus.

I started on the large chest of drawers in Mum's bedroom and found, among other things, the "Flags of the Allies" (UK, France, Russia) tablecloth for which my paternal grandmother had made the filet crochet edging. She was twenty-two when WW1 began.

As the clearing out of cupboards and drawers progressed it became clear that we would need to make some piles, sacks or boxes of stuff and to designate them for the dump, the council recycling centre or charity shops. Things that we found everywhere included clean tissues and toffees (Mum never went anywhere without these), candles (many saved from the power cut times of the1970s and even before!), keys and kettles. The final count of kettles was eleven. I think three of them worked without leaking but I don't think we'll ever work out why the eight others needed to be kept. Safety pins also turned up everywhere. We kept some things we wanted for ourselves too.

Old keys not used for anything

Bric-a-brac being collected for a charity shop

A few of the kettles

Most, but by no means all, of the candles.

Part four: from the sewing box

I took the threads; Rye took the buttons. There were several table napkins used as needle cases, as well as four actual needle cases, including a very old leather one that hadn't been around during my childhood. Of the seven thimbles, one of the brass ones fitted my finger and one fitted Rye's.

Some of the candles we found I was sure had come from our grandparents' houses. Perhaps some of the kettles had too. At one point, the shredder Rye was using overheated. She sighed and said, jokingly, "Oh well, there'll be another one somewhere." And there was!