Family

You may have realised I got disrupted writing my blog yesterday & ended up hastily, & rather cursorily, completing it. The news of my aunt's death came as quite a shock. We had been expecting her home yesterday, not news that she had collapsed & died. I spent most of yesterday in sombre mood, not able to raise much cheer.

And there was something to cheer about. When we escaped to the Pub for a bit of distraction & a meal - I didn't feel I had much concentration to cook & the Fox wasn't doing much better - we discovered Gaz, the owner/manager, had come back from his holidays an engaged man! We were all delighted.

I'm glad to say by the evening my mood was lifting a bit. I'm just hoping the two funerals are on different days. I'd hate to choose between them, but it will be impossible to be in Stoke for my aunt's funeral & here for MK's on the same day. Both have played important roles in my life of late. Both I feel the need to say my farewells to. Both I want to support those left behind, be it Helen, MK's widow, or my cousin Anne.

I remember well how bereft I felt when my father died. By then my mother was long dead. My brother had died a year or two before. I had long left home & married. It surprised me just how much losing my father meant. It wasn't just losing the man that was so upsetting. It was losing the last member of my immediate family, the last person to remember those intimate childhood experiences that are only known & shared with parents & siblings.

Oh, I still have some friends from my childhood days but it is not the same, can never be. They remain on the outside looking in on the family from a different perspective. They were never sharers of the frequent after dinner card games, the Christmas celebrations, the holidays, the family rows etc.

Anne will be in that position now. Her father died about 10 years ago. Now her mother has died. She was an only child so there are no brothers & sisters to share her grief with. I'm sure her husband will do his best to help but this is partially a grief for a loss of childhood & family that pre-dates any marriage. I felt so alone, even with the Fox's love surrounding me, his arms always ready to gather me up & comfort me. I was very grateful for my extended family rallying around. People who knew my parents & brother, or stories of them, long before I met the Fox, people I know who will be there to rally around support me if ever anything happened to the Fox. For all you sometimes get irritated about family, even extended family, there is something very special about family.