Birthday celebrations and a visit to my old home.

It was my brother's birthday on the 23 August, so today we went over to where he lives and went out for a meal.

Happy Birthday J!

After an excellent lunch in a pub in our childhood village of Kempsey, nr Worcester, we drove up to Kempsey Common, where my family lived from 1969 - 1996

This was the view I had from my bedroom window, looking out over the Malvern Hills.

And this is the house I lived in from the age of 6 until I was 16. A lot of memories were released from both my brother and I, happy and sad ones but all good to feel.

I showed Compostgirl the old hollow oak tree where I used to hide and read all day and dream.
A good day out

Sunday musings

Glorious weather here today, we got up a little later than usual ( we were all tired so had a lie in) Compostgirl made tea for us ( a first - she has made other hot drinks but tea is quite tricky with the kettle even with supervision) and also insisted on making me toast -I have not been very well and she wanted me to have breakfast in bed,  so who was I to spoil her plans?)

and we did a lot outside in the garden and also had a visit from some neighbours who buy eggs from us - they stayed and chatted about this and that for a bit.

Compostgirl cleaned out the guinea pigs and very proudly showed them off to our neighbours - the piggles are definitely getting friendlier with people!

We obviously stopped at 11 am to stand, and bow our heads and keep silent - thinking about all those who have died fighting.

Some interesting discussions with an nearly 11 year old Compostgirl about wars and morals and suchlike - some very interesting ideas came up!

More great stuff via Freecycle! including some family history for me.....

Last week I got some tomato plants in exchange for some eggs and surplus organic onion sets. I arranged this swap via the comments pages on this blog, with Sue-from-Hereford. She was a lovely lady, and the tomato plants ( yes I know, I know, I already have far too many!) are of a variety I haven't grown before! She had tried and failed to get some onion sets from Hereford Freecycle and I was happy to provide some from my surplus stock.

And today, I have acquired a projector screen from Freecycle, which will be useful for when I am giving talks.

Funnily enough, the lady I got it from is a Family History lecturer (when I got her email I realised had heard of her name), and when we got chatting (as you do) on the 'phone I mentioned that I had very little detail about my Mum's family, because when I was 10 she lost the ability to speak to me. This meant I never got to find out any details about my ancestors and as we could never find Mum's birth certificate, I have found it very hard to trace my family tree.

Well blow me down if she didn't come up with my Mum's first marriage details, the dates of birth of my half siblings ( who I never had any contact with so don't know where they now live to ask stuff...)

from her sources online, while we were chatting on the 'phone!

What a result! She did this from my Mum's maiden name and her first married name. She is hopeful she can find out a bit more for me as well. So, I may yet solve the mystery of exactly when during the First World War my Mum was born....and maybe even more!

Oooh I have tried and failed before, to trace any family history! My Mum divorced her first husband but met my Dad while it was all still going on. I was born before the divorce became final. In the 1960's, despite what they say about them being "swinging" ....well..having an illegitimate child and "living in sin" wasn't, apparently, the done thing!

I never really felt any fall out from all this, as my Mum changed her surname to match my Dad's before they finally got married and I had my Dad's surname from birth BUT it must have been hard for them....and I do know my Mum's parents disowned her and forbade any family contact with her, for the "shame" she had supposedly brought on the family name. (strict Irish Catholics, they were, very unkind.....!)

And so this bit of family history was (understandably, I suppose) kept a bit quiet....and must have been very painful for my parents. I knew about it, of course, but I also knew it wasn't a subject for very much discussion. And then when Mum had her first stroke and could no longer talk, any chance I had of finding out more, vanished.

So, I have not been able to trace my family tree. And I have always wondered, just how old my Mum really was...and where she was born...things like that.? These are, after all, the fabric of our lives. We all make small talk about where we were born, our surnames, our relatives, what our grandparents did, who died when...stuff like that. And I don't know any of it.

So maybe, just maybe, I am going to find out a bit more! Oooh exciting :-) Isn't it funny how things drop into place sometimes? A chance conversation and things just ........happen.

I won't hold my breath, but it IS nice to know my Mum DOES have a documented history out there, somewhere ;-)

And its another chapter for my book ;-)

A thank you.

Thank you all for your kind thoughts about my earlier post.

I loved my Mum very much and I miss her very much. This day is always a hard day for me and it actually gets worse as I get older, in a way, because I am a Mum now and all the things I do here, the preserving, growing, chickens, making wine etc, well my Mum was SO good at all that and I remember her doing all of it so vividly.

I would love to have her here, to see what we do here at Compost Mansions (oh how she would love it here!), to meet her grandchild and for me to ask her questions...I have SO many questions I would ask her and so many things I want to say to her.

I only ever had my Mum as a child, I lost her, to talk to, when I was 10 and I really miss not having had a mum to talk to, as an adult.

Ho hum...it has actually been a good-ish day, I have resolutely avoided all the Hillsborough stuff, not because I don't care, (I do, oh how I do...) but because for the last 20 years that is all this day has meant to every body else and I have always felt somehow *my* single loss paled in comparison with the deaths of all those poor people.....I know that sounds a bit silly, but having thought about it, I look back now and realise that is how I have felt.

My post about my Mum earlier today was partly to claim this day back for her and for me (but without wanting to be disrespectful to other people and their grief).

Also I realised I tended not to talk about my Mum, partly because, well, we just don't talk about death, do we?

Also I suffered a lot for being "different" as a teenager, having a mum who was not there at events, who lived in hospital and was "not the same" as other peoples mums...there was a stigma attached, somehow?...I got, not bullied exactly...but certainly I suffered from some very unkind, thoughtless words at school.

So...my post, whilst not being the first time I have ever discussed my Mum, was certainly the most public discussion I have ever had!

And while I didn't intend to upset anyone, I hope you all realise how precious love is, and how we should nurture it, welcome it, treasure it and live each day to the full, joyously and with an open heart....and that we should tell those we love, that we love them. And show it, each and every day.

because we only get to live today once.

I have learned that the hard way.

So, thank you all for your kind thoughts, they did help, and I thank you for them.


love, Sarah x

15th April 1989

20 years ago today, my Mother died.

She had been in various Hospitals, Nursing Homes etc for the previous 17 years, having suffered the first of many many strokes in November 1972, during my first year at Grammar School. I was 10. I found her, I was alone in the house, gave her CPR and called an ambulance.

She was paralysed down her right side, had brain damage and lost her ability to speak, but by June 1973, after a long session in the excellent River mead hospital in Oxford, had recovered enough to live at home ( on the ground floor) to walk with a stick, could write with her left hand and had begun to learn to speak again. Her mental faculties were apparently unimpaired, for which we were all very grateful. Her doctors spoke of anticipating "a near full recovery".

Then she had suffered another stroke, on the eve of my last day at school in July 1973, and never recovered from it. She was standing at the gate watching me ride my pony and in the space of time it took me to put Periwinkle in the stable and walk up to where she was standing, she had another, major, stroke and by the time I got to her she was on the ground, unconscious.

I gave her (yet again) CPR and called an ambulance, but the damage was done. She suffered more than 20 further strokes in the next decade, each one eating away a bit more of her brain.

She spent the next 16 years in hospital (usually on geriatric wards) amongst very old, usually senile people ( she was only 48 when this happened but stroke victims are usually older....) and I visited her several times a week, more if she was closer to where I lived but sometimes less often if she had been moved to a hospital 20 miles away ( as happened between one visit and the next once, I turned up to see her and found she had gone that afternoon from Worcester to a new ward in Evesham...)

I won't go into the whole other story of my disintegrating relationship with my father during this time, his alcoholism and his throwing me out of my family home when I was 16, thus aborting my senior education and plans for a glitering Oxbridge degree for no good reason other than his alcoholism......but despite all this I kept on visiting MY MUM, because that's who she was, despite the paralysis, the inability to talk to me, the terrible surroundings, the soul destroying (for her and for me) nature of the geriatric wards she inhabited ( remember this was in the 70's and "Human Rights" and "Patient Dignity" were not buzzwords to "the management" The nursing staff were all wonderful but.....)

Mum attended my wedding and looked very happy to do so, she obviously approved of Compostman ( who wouldn't!) she showed lots of love and smiles whenever I went to see her (and oh however often I went, it NEVER felt like enough...)

but finally, her poor organs gave up the unequal struggle to cope with a semi paralysed body...and she died in the early hours of 15th April l989.

I was in the throes of my last week of revision for my University Finals for my Materials Science degree when this happened, I had been going to see Mum every day as she got ever weaker and I knew the end was near but still, it was a shock when the call came. I remember us going to see Mum in the early hours and after she died at 5 am coming home, in a numb state, to finally get to sleep late morning, and wake up at 3 pm, turn on the TV to see the Hillsborough disaster unfold in front of us on the TV screen.

The images I saw haunt me still. Coupled with my sad frame of mind and lack of sleep they took on an even more nightmarish quality which I can still clearly recall today.

I understand, to those who so tragically lost 96 loved ones at an innocent, pleasurable occasion like a Football match because of "officialdom", why this date is so sad and why the injustice still burns....

because I lost my Mum as well, today, 20 years ago, and whilst the circumstances are oh so totally and horribly and tragically different....we all lost loved ones on the 15th April 1989.

I can never forget this date. Nor should I. Nor should any of us.