Thank you

Thank you for all your kind thoughts.

The circle of life

My mum died yesterday at 1.45 pm. Mr Life and I were with her. It's a time of very mixed emotions - relief that she's freed from her sad state and sadness that she's gone.

Earlier that morning, Daughter 1 went for the first scan of her second pregnancy. Here is Grandson's little sibling, so far known in the family as Volume Two, which is what's written on the front of his/her medical notes.

And so the world turns... .

Eating

Last night, lying in bed, I suddenly thought: SLUGS. Do slugs eat gerberas? I wondered. Are they eating my new gerberas (price £7.50 for the six) at this moment? I asked myself.

Well, I'll give you three guesses.

So today I bought some net and Mr Life cut rounds out of it with the hope that the scratchy nature of it might discourage the slugs. As we went out for a walk at 10 this evening, we had a look to see if this was working. Was it?

Nope.

On the subject of eating: when our minister talks to the children, he always sits on the steps leading up to the platform at the front of our church and invites them to come up and sit beside them. Yesterday, Daughter 1 took Grandson up and perched there with him on her knee. The minister was talking about Olympic glory and relating this to other types of glory, and, presumably about to make a relevant point, picked up the plate of communion bread which was still on the table from the earlier (communion) service.

Grandson, who'd been gazing idly around, brightened up at the sight of the plate. "Num num num!" he suggested hopefully. Everyone laughed. The minister gave him a bit of bread, which he munched with enthusiasm. Everyone watched. The minister sighed. "I think I've lost my audience," he said. And he had.

The staff

"That little rockery has never really worked," I said to Mr Life yesterday.

And hey presto, he swung into action.

I did the washing, hung it out and brought it in again. Cassie helped.

She stuck loyally to her post even when there was nothing left in the basket but some socks.

Such helpful family members. What would I do without them?

Climber

I babysat today in Daughter 1's house while she and SIL 1 took one of their guinea pigs to the vet. Grandson played with his toys for a while... 

and then took off.

He found a handy step provided by Daughter 1's workbox.

It allowed him to reach more of the stuff on the shelves.

Spoilsport Granny moved a box of bricks on to the "step". He accepted this with his customary equanimity.

(PS - I had one hand stretched out towards him in case he fell. But he seemed very practised at this feat.)

Thumby

In moments of slight crisis in Grandson's life - of which there are not many (he is blessed so far with a sunny nature) - he sucks his thumb. His parents refer to his mood on such occasions as being "a bit thumby". This also describes my feelings since Daughter 2 left for London; and my thumbiness has increased with my mother's illness. When she improves, she's weaker and unhappier and more puzzled than when she was apparently unaware of anything, and naturally enough it's been very stressful to witness.

However, as I left the hospital last night, a nurse - while sympathising - said to me, "It's just part of life." And it was precisely the right thing to say to me at that moment. I did already realise, of course, that we all decline and die; but somehow I was still at the stage of feeling that I ought to be able to do something to improve my mum's lot. And when the nurse said that, it was as if a mist had cleared and I suddenly felt - well, sometime soon is my mum's time to go and that's just the way it is.

I can't necessarily be sure that this feeling of acceptance will be permanent (watch this space) but last night at least it also extended to some extent to accepting the loss in our everyday lives of Daughter 2. Again, I know intellectually that children leave home in the end. But I need to remind myself that it's "just part of life" and there are other, better, parts.

Such as Grandson.  We had him for six hours yesterday, without his parents, to start preparing him for the time when Daughter 1 goes back to work three days a week and leaves him with us. I did enjoy it! He's at the beginning of life and he's so cheering. Which reminds me of the celebration of babyhood - "A common-sense / Thumbs-down on the dodo's mode" - in Sylvia Plath's poem to her unborn child. The imagery in this poem makes me wriggle with pleasure:

You're

Clownlike, happiest on your hands,
Feet to the stars, and moon-skulled,
Gilled like a fish. A common-sense
Thumbs-down on the dodo's mode.
Wrapped up in yourself like a spool,
Trawling your dark, as owls do.
Mute as a turnip from the Fourth
Of July to All Fools' Day,
O high-riser, my little loaf.

Vague as fog and looked for like mail.
Farther off than Australia.
Bent-backed Atlas, our traveled prawn.
Snug as a bud and at home
Like a sprat in a pickle jug.
A creel of eels, all ripples.
Jumpy as a Mexican bean.
Right, like a well-done sum.
A clean slate, with your own face on.

Continuing...

These are not significant lilies, just the ones in the dining room.

Thank you so much for your kind thoughts. My mum struggles on. She's very weak and sometimes extremely confused but, as she said apologetically today, "I'm afraid I'm fighting it." The nurses are amazed that she's still here but I'm a bit less amazed because this was the fourth time that some very nice medical person had prepared me for the worst and then Mum rallied. Well, rallied a bit. She can't manage to hold the weight of a plastic beaker and sleeps most of the time. But the heart beats on.

Sadly...

Sadly, Mum deteriorated on Wednesday and now isn't going to be able to come home - indeed, isn't aware of where she is. Most of my time since then has been spent at her bedside at the hospice with various other family members taking shifts with me. Such a horrible time - and not over yet.

The Whistling Tortoise

This morning, Mr Life and I went to a splendid shop called "The Whistling Tortoise" - I've no idea what's behind the name but it sells more disability aids than I imagined existed - for example, a no-hands device to help you smoke your cigarette. That's a bit sad, don't you think? Anyway, we bought an adjustable thing to prop Mum up in bed (when she gets home) and an over-bed table/tray. Then we went for a walk round Stockbridge in lovely sunshine (sun two days running!). I don't know about you, but I often imagine what it must be like to live somewhere else: for example, I wouldn't enjoy having just a small flagged front garden but the above house obviously contains a keen gardener who crams as many pots into it as he/she can.

This is the area known as The Colonies. It's quite sweet, but not built for cars. Also, it's near the Water of Leith and of recent years, in the funny weather we've been having, it sometimes floods, which happened a week or two ago. You can see sandbags in the shadow on the right.

This is where they're trying to stop the flooding by building a big embankment which narrows the river. It doesn't seem logical to me - you'd think the river, if narrower, would be fuller - but according to Mr Life this will make the water scour the bottom of the river and thus make it deeper. Who knew? Well, someone, obviously. If they're right. Anyway, it wasn't finished in time to prevent the recent floods, alas.

It's a pity about cars, isn't it? This is a nice (and expensive) terrace of Georgian houses but it must be difficult to park outside your house and the cars don't really improve the view. I tend to think that cars should be banned from cities.

Not our car, of course.

Another day older...

This was Grandson yesterday. My excuse for posting a picture of him is that Nanny in Worcester likes to see him. Note Grandpa in the background, more interested in the Sunday Times motoring section than in Grandson. (He isn't really. Or only for a while.)

I took a photo of the sky at 8.30 this morning. It was encouragingly blue.

I then took some photos of the garden. Look, sunshine. Cassie helpfully posed to add aesthetic appeal. She looks here as if someone's chopped off her tail. They haven't. I assume she was swishing it.

And after what I calculated were my 97th and 98th visits to Mum in hospital (arrangements are still being made for her coming home) I photographed the sky again at 9.30 this evening. I do love the long, light summer evenings, though I suppose we're spinning round towards winter again.

So yes - nothing much happened today.

Saggy pants

TATTOOS??? SAGGY PANTS??? HAT ON BACKWARDS??? (actually, that doesn't sound so bad).

Oh, my commenters, no no no. Grandson actually looks very like Son as a baby, so I'm assuming that he's going to grow up something like the above. (Though Grandson's dad is a handsome chap so looking like him would be fine too.)

On reflection, the photo above does actually feature saggy pants-with-the-British-meaning, doesn't it...? (see post for July 22).

The flowers came out quite well. Daughter 2 and I have developed into a wedding flower team: she does the bouquets and the small table arrangements and I do the bigger ones.

I think that's us finished now. Three weddings. That seems enough.

Stripey suit

What a pity you couldn't pop along for coffee. Ah well.

I've been ironing while watching the Olympic opening ceremony, which struck me in parts as very engaging and in other parts as extremely odd - though hugely impressive in its organisation. But now I've finished the ironing and the athletes are parading in. They've only got to G (Germany) so I decided to leave them to it and look at photos of Grandson taken this morning.

He was wearing his stripey suit, as you can see. And a big smile.

Daughter 1 and I took him to a soft play place.

Isn't it hard to imagine him as a big hairy man?

Friends

Today I went out for lunch with five friends and we walked along the River Tyne in Haddington. It was a lovely day though at the point that I took these photos, the sun had temporarily gone behind a cloud. We started teaching together in 1973 and in those days we used to talk about our chaps - most of whom are now our husbands. As years passed, the chat tended to be about our children. Recently it's been about retirement and our various aches and pains, growing deafness and - more happily - our grandchildren. Today, however, one of my friends shared her huge worry about her daughter, who has breast cancer which isn't responding to chemotherapy.

And of course we couldn't make it better at all except by listening and sympathising and hugging and hoping.

And I thought too about bloggy friends and your kind thoughts about my mum. Her illness of course isn't anything like as tragic as that of my friend's daughter, who's 35 and who has a toddler and a baby. But still, it's sad and though to non-blogging people the sympathy of sort-of-strangers would seem odd, we all know that it actually helps.

It's funny, isn't it, the sort of virtual Venn diagram of bloggy friends? Occasionally you click on a comment on one of one of the blogs you read and have a look at the commenter's blog and lo! - she's being read by some of the people you know and you never knew about this. And it feels a tiny bit as if they've been having a party to which they never invited you! It would be so good to have all your bloggy friends round for coffee - they wouldn't actually all "know" each other but really quite a lot of them would. If only... .

My place, tomorrow at 10.30, anyone? I'll make scones.

The young and the old

Daughter 1 and I took Grandson in to see Mum this morning but she was more or less asleep and we couldn't really rouse her so we came away again. When I went back this afternoon and evening, she was much more herself but only faintly remembered his visit. She was so exasperated that she'd missed him.

In the afternoon, I sought out the consultant and had a talk with him, and as a result I've decided to bring Mum home. They can't do anything for her in the hospice except for nursing and palliative care and I feel she'd be happier at home, with nurses coming in to help.

It'll take a few days to set this up and it all depends on her continuing to be reasonably conscious. But I feel relieved to have made this decision. I won't be able to do much in the way of normal activities once she's here but after all, what does that really matter for a few days/weeks/months?

Twenty years ago, we looked after my mother-in-law in our house for the last six months of her life - she too had cancer and had the bedroom that is now Mum's - and there was no help available then apart from the GP coming in. So we can do this. I hope.

Man in kilt

This is Son and DIL leading off the dancing at the start of the wedding ceilidh. Now, of recent years there has been a silly "tradition" - not traditional at all - that Scottish men don't wear anything under their kilts. I haven't conducted any research on this, you'll understand, but I seriously doubt that anyone sensible would fail to wear pants (or underpants, as I believe Americans would call them) in a kilt-wearing situation. Apart from anything else, men aren't so good at sitting with their knees together as ladies are; and also, this is Scotland and it can be chilly.

So you'll be relieved to know that Son was wearing his Wedding Pants.

These are boxer shorts that his big sister (Daughter 2) gave him before Daughter 1's wedding in 2006. I now can't remember exactly why, except that clearly everyone needs Wedding Pants. (They're green with red and yellow cars on them.) After the wedding, they entered his pants drawer and were rotated with his others. In due course they were retired - to be brought briefly out of retirement for Daughter 2's wedding last year.

When he inspected them before his own wedding, he found that the elastic had perished somewhat. However, you can't get married without your Wedding Pants, obviously, so he put them on and used a safety pin for - well, safety. And they didn't fall down.

They weren't on display so I didn't know that he was wearing them till later.

I think they might have served their purpose now.

PS: Having written this, I was struck briefly with doubts as to whether Son would like his underwear described to the world of Blog. So I texted him: Can I blog about your wedding pants?  He replied: Of course!  So I will.

Ducks and non-ducks

I only have mornings free at the moment since afternoons and evenings are spent visiting my mother, so this morning I went to see Daughter 1. I took Grandson in his pushchair to Dr Neil's Garden by Duddingston Loch. We looked at the ducks - some of them were not really ducks but Canada geese or herring gulls, but I felt the ornithological details didn't matter much at the moment. He listened to them going "quack" and "honk" and "screech" and he smiled.

I feel so worried about my mother. On her good days, I feel that I should press to have her home, but on her bad days I'm grateful she's in hospital. Even on her good days, she's very confused but she wants to come home. Oh, the guilt and the uncertainty. What to do? But the hill is very soothing.

And Daughter 2 is still in London and I wish so much that she weren't.  

So things could be better. But for a while, with Grandson climbing on me with his rubbery little legs, beaming at the ducks and non-ducks, going "psssy" at Gus the Garden cat and looking all round with such appreciation and interest at everything - I felt happy.

And the living is not all that easy

As I've said before, Scotland doesn't seem on the whole to have been so copiously wet as England this summer, but it's been grey and damp - hence this headline in the paper the other day.

And indeed, the sun did shine and I sat on the bench and drank a cup of coffee.

Yesterday, however - no sunshine. Mr Life and I decided to go for a wet walk in the Botanics, but it was slightly wetter than we'd bargained for. (This is a path, by the way, not a river.) We did get the place more or less to ourselves, though, which is always nice...

... and the herbaceous border was doing its best to bloom.

These pictures are for Nanny in Worcester: Grandson surveying his cake with enthusiasm...

... and then giving it his seal of approval. Num num num.

When I was one...

... I had just begun. To be more accurate, I began a year ago today. Granny feels that it's been an action-packed year, and not all in a good way. However, I cheer everyone up.

Unfortunately my Worcester Nanny, Worcester Gramps, Worcester Uncle, Auntie Daughter 2, Uncle Son and Great Granny couldn't celebrate in person with me today. But I had fun all the same.

And my first taste of cake.

I like cake. Num num num, as I remarked at the time.

Ah!

It seems like only yesterday that my baby boy was born and now he's all grown up.

(And, for Anna, a picture of swinging kilts at the ceilidh in the evening.)