Gran - a bit of her life before her death

In my last blog post, I talked a little about my Grandma, a woman who was born in 1896 - a time that I have come to regard as one of the prime eras of Victorian industrialism. Gran was born in West Vale, Halifax in a Mill cottage belonging to Prospect Mill, which in those days, probably didn't look too unlike this photo of it.

Prospect Mill, was started by my Great Great Grandfather, George Ingham, and my Gran's father Fred Sutcliffe had started work there 'at the bottom' and through a passion for self education, managed to better himself into eventual marriage of the bosses daughter Harriet and promotion to wool buyer and a seat on the board of directors.

Gran was the youngest of four children and to give some scale to her story, her sister Lily was twenty years her senior. Gran said that even as a small child she never felt excluded by her older siblings. At family concerts, she sat under the piano until she was old and adept enough to sit at it and accompany her sister Olive who played the violin. Gran's brother Ingham had "a bit of a gym" set up in the loft and patiently taught his little sister, my Gran, to climb ropes and wall-bars.

Eventually, the family moved from the cottage, to a huge house in Halifax, 'Gads Hill' (named after Dicken's house), it was set as the name suggests, up on a hill. They had large gardens and a tennis court. As the older children matured into teenagers and then early adulthood, house-partys and tennis evenings were common. Fourteen places were quite usual at meal times. These family parties, were also often bi- or tri lingual, as Ingham had been sent to study in Germany, spending time in Hannover and learning to speak the language fluently. Following Ingham, when their turn came, Gran's older sisters Lily and Olive were sent to 'Finishing School'in Switzerland and also became talented linguists. My Gran, Phyllis, visited them in Switzerland and shared the family talent for languages; even aged 104, she would sing herself to sleep in French or German. Lily corresponded in French to her old friends even in her 90s hampered as she was with bottle-bottom glasses and failing sight. Sadly Auntie Lily died when I was in my teens. She was the one that I really would have liked to know as an adult - we have several interesting things in common.

It was a priviledged childhood for all of them - one where servants reigned in the kitchen and were summoned by bells. Fine art and music were topics of discussion and actively persued as hobbys. Music was my Gran's first love and as she finished her time at school, she stayed on to teach the younger ones music and trained to become a concert pianist.

That was the plan - but then war broke out "and that..." said Gran, "...was that!".


Coming from a home where servants cleaned, they soon found themselves as trainee nurses scrubbing floors with carbolic soap, making ready a large house to recieve wounded soldiers covered in mud and blood from the 'front'.

Lily and Olive also nursed in France and their younger sister, my Gran nursed in England and Scotland. She had fond memories of 'her boys' and kept a photo album of some of her patients as they recuperated from the horrors of the trenches and the front-lines of places such as flanders. Ingham was sent to Egypt, where he survived war, only to contract Pneumonia from a swimming pool and die prematurely leaving a young widow and two daughters. The years of war were pivotal to my Gran, the austerity and horror of the First and then the Second World War gave her a self discipline and a code of living that remained with her always, it shaped her attitude to life and society. The live-in home helps that she had to have in the 1990s had a very hard time trying to live up to her very simple way of life and I was constantly smuggling loo rolls and other 'luxury items' in for them. Gran declared that they should only use one sheet of toilet tissue at a time and woe betide anyone found throwing food away! Gran used to search the rubbish bins in her kitchen for food waste and on finding anything discarded by her home help, would 'tut-tut' through her teeth - mumbling darkly while observing the newly found scrap - words like "this would feed a child...".

She was not an easy person to care for, or shop for. Nothing was ever quite right - or up to scratch. When she once cut her leg and I spent 5 hours in A&E with her, it was an eye opener for me. She spent the time re-arranging the department from her cubicle, stating what (in her WW1 opinion) was not rightly placed, proportioned or positioned. The Doctors, all of which she declared, were "...far too young and LOOK he even has a PONY-TAIL". Being deaf as a post, these comments came out at full volume. I was mortified and I think the Dr with the Ponytail was pleased to discharge her!

As a consequence of her fussiness, I never ever offered to do her shopping, having realised at quite an early age that it was a recipe for disaster, more than that, an open invitation for criticism and for falling out of favour...

My mum was terrified of Gran and also her sister, my Aunt Joy. Having lived her whole life on the end of my Grandma's critical tongue and my Aunt's equally critical and caustic tongue, she never felt that she had gained her mother's approval - certainly she didn't get her sister's approval. Having witnessed this, I was not going to enter into the possibility of a critical relationship with my Gran and Aunt as I saw how destructive it could be. So, when I eventually started to visit them more regularly, after my mum died, we ate cakes, drank tea and developed a relationship that involved art and literature. It was a relationship, for the most part devoid of conflict - I simply wouldn't play into the game and avoided it.

After my Aunt Joy died in the 1990s (Gran nursed her from the age of 3 till her death at 58), the dynamic between us mellowed and we became quite good friends - regardless of this, I still had to maintain the status-quo between her and her 'carers'.

However, after mum had died in 1991 and I became inseperable from coffins, hearses and graves, Gran was more than a little perplexed at my chosen career. She would often pronounce in exasperation her mantra, "women don't go to funerals in our family..."

When my Aunt Joy eventually died, Gran refused point blank to go to her funeral - repeating again and again, the family funeral mantra. I pointed out that as we were a family consisting only of women, it seemed a shame that none of us would therefore go to each others funerals...and she backed down, but only as far as saying she would be picked up in the limousine. When we arrived in the cemetery for the graveside service, Gran refused to get out of the car - hence (see last blog post) me having to place it nearer the grave in the hopes that the very expensive set of digital hearing aids would pick up what the doddery Vicar that Gran had chosen was about to say. I didn't realise that the Vicar was doddering about behind the limousine, hence he got a bit of a tap on the leg. Things went from bad to worse when the doddery Vicar started reciting the 23rd Psalm and a pneumatic drill sang forth just down the road, drowning out his words.
However, by some miracle, (or wishful thinking on her part), Gran said that she heard every word of the service and that it was lovely - funny that - I was standing next to the grave and couldn't hear a thing. This was possibly, either because I didn't have any digital hearing aids, or because I was laughing so much internally as the doddery Vicar didn't seem to know a thing about my 'Auntie Wheels'. Joy by name but not always by nature!

Gran perked up hugely after Joy died. Being her constant carer for 58 years had been a huge commitment and although her life didn't change much from a routine point of view, Gran became more interested in my work and we started to have more regular afternoon teas. Her 100th birthday came and went - she was disgusted when she spotted the printed signature on her telegram from the Queen, but failed to notice that her birthday lunch was held in a very camp Gay Hotel. She was however, astonished that her Neice (Auntie Joan - who's funeral I blogged about), had been brought down from Worcestershire and the following day, she entertained Joan, who returned to my home in the evening, shattered, and remarked wistfully about my Gran, that "she didn't even have a rest after lunch...." Joan was at least 30 years her junior!

So, that was my Gran - well, a little insight into her. She was a tiny woman with a large personality. Throughout her life, although her parents moved down south after the Great War, she remained a Yorkshire woman at heart. Her motto was that "if it's Yorkshire, it's alright" - but, you have to say that like she did, because she retained the correct accent!

It worked for her.

20 Years of daily death...

In the middle of the night on 31st August 1991, my mum aged 58 - not feeling well, ran a bath and got in it....sometime later on the next day, she was lifted out of her bath by the coroner's men and taken away to be examined. They wanted to know why she had died.

I have to say, it was a question that I asked myself, when I was eventually tracked down at a friends house. I asked the question more than once and still sometimes re-visit it.

To cut a long story short, the coroner never worked out the reason why mum died, and gave an open verdict. I think it was to shut me up as I refused to accept that she had taken her own life (the path' results suggested an overdose), and luckily, I went to the inquest armed with a portly solicitor as I had wind of the way things might go...the process was a little long-winded, but we got there in the end.

The whole event and the unfolding circumstances around mum's death and funeral were particularly surreal and impacted my life to such an extent that 20 years later, there has hardly been a day in which death has not featured loudly or largely in my life. My mother, by prematurely dying, gave me a whole new outlook on the meaning of life. Moreover, I gained a new career path along which to stumble and acquired a whole lot of interesting skills and a depth of knowledge about hitherto unknown aspects of human existance. These skills and knowledge of the way in which death actually works, from a practical sense at least, came in very handy when the rest of my family and bloodline started to disperse into death's dark void...Firstly, my aunt died at the age of 58 - my cousin died aged (yes you guessed) 58... then my gran died aged 104.5 (yes really...) and her cousin, being the last except for me followed on in her late 80s.

My aunt's death and funeral is a story in itself, it involved among other things, a loud pneumatic drill, the vicar being 'nudged' by the limousine as it edged nearer the grave to let my gran (who refused to get out of it) a view of the proceedings and afterwards, the solicitor handing me a copy of my aunt's will, over the open grave, as we stood on the boards, one at each side, looking down at the coffin below us.

Gran's funeral proved a shock to the registrar, who asked which funeral director I was going to use. I replied that I was going to 'do the funeral myself...' her face was a picture! Like my aunt's death and funeral, it is an epic tale and hopefully befitting a life of 104.5 years.

My cousin died in America, so I couldn't do much except write a bit to be read out during his memorial. He was an activist in the world of LGBT Queer & disabled folk and apart from being a tiny man with a massive personality, he was known for his teaching, writing and poetry in the USA, especially in SF and NY. In spite of his notoriety in his own LGBT circles, he didn't manage to pluck up courage to 'come out' to his mum till the 90s. He told me that I had inspired him to have 'the conversation'. It was his mum who was the last bit of my branch of the family tree to die and apart from collecting her from her final dwelling in a nursing home in Worcestershire, I was determined that I would do everything else for her.

So I did.

Having rung the funeral director, I arranged to go up and embalm her....knowing her size, I ordered her a lovely wicker coffin - to be delivered the day before I was due to go up to Worcestershire. Then before the day dawned, I set off in my little red van, with my embalming kit on board.... All did not go well - The van broke down on the M5 and I had to ask the rather startled RAC switchboard operator to send someone out ASAP as I was on my way to embalm my 'Auntie'.

Eventually I was rescued and arrived at the funeral directors - with a quick coffee break I took a look at the forms I had to fill in for the Crematorium - the Nursing Home Matron had registered the death for me...I went to spend a few precious hours with Auntie Joan.

I embalmed, dressed and placed her in her coffin myself - she was a very thin lady, inspite of being quite tall. When she was alive, I had never seen her eat huge amounts of anything except tea and homemade biscuits.

Having made her comfortable, I went back home down the M5 - and in the next few days, ordered the flowers - a coffin spray of Nerines (she worked in a nursery that bred them for 30 years)...I also wrote the funeral service, chose the music and arranged for the wake to be held in the church hall opposite Auntie's house. She had never really been into going to church, but as an artist, was very much a part of the local community and lots of people wanted the chance to chat about her.

I have many memories of Joan's funeral - walking in front of the hearse along the High Street in Upton-on-Severn where she had lived for so long. Allowing her to leave her community slowly, with quiet dignity - but the maximum of traffic disruption would have made her smile. Later, at the end of the service, I remember being being thanked by people who had known her for decades, for having given her such a special and appropriate funeral. Being my Aunt's chief mourner, her Embalmer, Funeral Director and Celebrant, I couldn't have done more and wouldn't have done any less!

Practical involvement, has always been my way of coping when death has touched me personally and for me, the practical tasks take on a spiritual quality that has an essence of healing and a continuum that bonds me within the great circle of existence. Of course I miss them all, my family and many friends who have gone before me - but I am not grief stricken. They live in me and continue in my memory and as part of my life.

That first time, twenty years ago, when my mum died - I had no idea what to do. What could I do? Being a French Polisher, the most obvious thing to do was to polish her coffin.....it kept me occupied for a few hours, gave me something to focus on and time to think - that's where it all started. I came into the business of death at the sharp end. It isn't a job or a business to me, it is who I am, who we are as human beings. If you call Funeral Directing an 'Industry' in my presence, I am liable to bite... People like me, look after people like you and people like me will look after me when I die, if you can't manage it yourself.

However, twenty years on from mum's death, with an Embalming Diploma; a BA (Hons) in Death Loss and Palliative Care and an MA (Distinction)in Religion: The Rhetoric and Rituals of Death under my belt, I still have no further clues as to the real mystery of death - that's why it's so special.

What I have got, is a comfortable relationship with it - a knowledge that it is natural and inevitable. Moreover, I have a sneaking suspicion that it isn't the end...rather, as Peter Pan suggested the start of something new and exciting. After all, he said 'To die would be an awfully big adventure' and that was my grandma's outlook, she misquoted it beautifully - often - and as the last branch on the family tree, I think it is only my duty to go along with her sentiment - it's traditional to do the same thing in families after all, isn't it?

Though having said that, I am approaching my 58th year cautiously and with some trepidation!!!

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I wonder if this will work as a link...?

Funeral......

I have just been to a funeral.......
It was a Co-Op one and I was told off!

However, the cortege arrived nearly 30 minutes late to the church and the person sitting next to me was wondering if the FD had managed to get them out of the house.

My reply was that if that was the case, they hadn't done their job correctly in the preceeding days - to support the family and prepare them for the funeral.

I was smartly told that it wasnt appropriate, moreover, that it wasn't a competition....

Little does the layman appreciate, that it is, indeed, always a 'competition' and that every step/movement/gesture and facial expression of FD and bearers is to be scrutinised by opposing funeral professionals........every time, no matter what/where/whom. It is a matter of instinct and of great interest. Perfectly natural behaviour!!!

Not only that, minute details such as the very way in which flowers are placed on top of the coffin can generate endless discussion.

I know - you will point out that I am very anti Co-Op - so would look for problems and issues regardless!

The delay was apparently due to traffic - not local....so no family crisis on the doorstep...but hey - here I am in my posh clothes writing this, instead of going to the reception.

Here is a link to Grant McLachlan's website...

Worth a look if you enjoy wildlife documentaries and films with decent soundtracks!

I am very proud to have a link with such a talented composer.....enjoy listening to the small sample of clips on here.

von Hagens and the mating human corpses...

Here........he's gone and done it!

von Hagens has mated corpses........he said he would.

Sex and death in the ultimate freak show peep show..........

It had to happen. Right now, I am simply shaking my head in disbelief.

I have decided that they must be NECROSEXUAL...............heheheeeee!

Allowed Grief

Over the years, I have seen a lot of ways of dealing with death - some of these have not seemed to me to be helpful. Not only that, I have met plenty of people who carry the long term, still open, scars that they just can't seem to resolve; from deaths that they were not allowed to acknowledge fully as important emotional events.

The British 'stiff-upper-lip' is a case in point. Often I have watched throughout the post-death period - the removal of the deceased from home; family visits to the chapel of rest - and then, while sitting at the back of funeral services as an observer of the unfolding ritual, I have watched those closest to the person in the box, trying all the time to hold it together. Later hearing things said like "I didn't cry - I kept strong for the children", or "I didn't show myself up by crying". It's not only the public grief that was being pushed aside - it was seen as something to be avoided even in private places; within the family and home.

I ask this question....If we feel that we can't cry when our child dies, If we can't cry when our parent dies, If we can't cry when our spouse of 50 years dies; when can we cry?

Grief is sometime seen as a negative emotion - something to be avoided, negated and pushed away. This clip from a very wise man is a how I believe human beings can heal in cases of 'Death Loss and Palliative Care'.

The quotation marks are there because that's what my BA degree is in......actually, we don't need to do a degree in order to realise that the truth is often very simple.

What we need to do, I think, is to remind people that they do not need permission to grieve......