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Nellie Beatrice Little - born 27 May 1923,
died 6 February 1965 |
It is 50 years ago today that my mother died.
She died during the early hours of February 6, 1965 at our home – 339 Manchester Road, Northwich. She was 41, I was 11.
I’ve always kept a diary – some years more diligently than others. My diary for February 6, 1965 said simply: “Mum died today.”
Fifty years on, I can be a little more articulate, but when I take the pain of that day out of the little box in my mind where I placed it all those years ago, it still has the capacity to hurt.
I don’t know why a 61-year-old man should feel the need to weep for his long-dead mother, how can something which happened so long ago still be so painful?
If expressing your feelings is therapy, perhaps this diary entry is the one I should have written 50 years ago.
I was very close to my mother (what child isn’t?). I would say she was a kind person because I never heard her say anything mean or bad about anyone. She would describe some people in our neighbourhood as dirty, as in unwashed, but they certainly were.
She had also suffered her fair share of sorrow. Her mother died one day before her 10th birthday, leaving her father with six children (my mother was the second oldest) and her father died four years later. At the age of 15, the orphanage where she’d been placed found her a position as a servant with the Drabble family, possibly the grandparents of the author Margaret Drabble.
During the Second World War, she joined the WRNS and was stationed near London, working as a cook. She heard the sound of German bombers, like a hundred motorcycles overhead (think Ducatis, not Hondas) and also experienced the anxiety of hearing the engine on a V1 flying bomb cut out overhead. After the war, she got a job as a cook at Dutton Hospital in Cheshire, an old isolation hospital for TB sufferers, and that’s where she met my father (a plumber) who was doing some work there.
They were married in Doncaster in 1948, honeymooned in Scarborough, and my sister Margaret was born in 1949. I followed in 1953.
My mother was tall for a woman of her day, perhaps 5ft 6in, and she was slim, but most people were back then. She didn’t work; her job was to look after her husband, children and the house, which was also the norm 50 years ago, and she was a genuine homemaker. My dad worked for himself and he worked long hours. At the weekend, he played saxophone in a dance band and would be out on Saturday and Sunday nights. Mum never went with him.
So, in effect, it was my mum who cared for us, brought us up and kept things running. I remember seeing my dad at breakfast and Sunday dinner, but not at regular times in the evening or on Saturdays. He never came on holiday with us.
My dad certainly worked hard, but there was no doubt that he had "other interests". Of course, that did not occur to me at the time and I never witnessed rows between my parents. Was my mum happy? She certainly seemed that way to me and if I was in want for anything, I certainly wasn't aware of it.
I had a general fear of being orphaned, a fear no doubt fostered by my mother's experience and much of the literature we were offered (children's books are full of poor little orphans) but I didn't think much about my parents' mortality.
When my mother got breast cancer she had to go into hospital for a mastectomy. We were able to visit her, people told me she would be all right and she told me she was cured, so I accepted it. That year, we went on holiday to the Isle of Man (without my dad) and I passed the 11-plus exam. I don't remember being told that mum was ill again, but I was aware that she wasn’t well.
There was some medication on the tallboy in her bedroom. She said it was going to make her better; but gradually she deteriorated. People came to help, her bed was moved downstairs and soon she was spending more and more time in bed.
Looking back, I can't think how the penny didn't drop. Members of her family - her sister Joyce - had come to visit and it hadn't occurred to me that that were coming to say goodbye. Once, I came back from school and went into the front room to see her. She was asleep, but woke when I came in. I remember being worried about her and asked if there was anything she wanted. She asked for a glass of water, I went to get it for her, but when I handed it to her, she couldn't hold it and it fell from her hand.
I was worried, but I didn't think that she would die. I expected her to get better.
A few days before she died my dad somewhat awkwardly got my sister and I together. I think his plan had been to tell us that mum was going to die and that we should be prepared for the event. He always skirted around difficult subjects and the message came across that mum might not pull through. I remember being upset; I remember being very scared; I remember having to consider the possibility of her death for the first time. In the words of poet Gavin Ewart:
For nursery days are gone, nightmare is
real and there are no good fairies.
The fox's teeth are in the bunny
and nothing can remove them, honey.
There were people in the house all the time now, aunts, family friends, grandparents ... and a night shift had been established. The fire in the front room was burning all the time. Nowadays, mum would have been taken to a hospice, in the care of Macmillan or Sue Ryder, but in 1965, she saw out her final days at home cared for by friends and family.
Fifty years ago today, I got up in the morning on February 6, it was a Saturday. I went downstairs and got myself some breakfast. I remember this with absolute clarity. I was putting some Weetabix in a bowl in the kitchen and Uncle Dick, my mum's younger brother and probably the sibling she was most close to, said he had some bad news to tell me: my mother had died during the night. I remember putting down my spoon and staring at my Weetabix going soggy in the bowl, I was stunned, I sobbed I know, I left my breakfast but I didn't know what to do. My mum would have comforted me, but there was no-one to comfort me. I have no idea what happened the rest of that day. I do remember being outside at the bottom of the yard and Uncle Ted (he was my great uncle and married to my dad's Aunt Doris, who lived next door) coming to stand with me. That was a nice thing to do.
1965 was a pretty dreadful year; I had a lot of time off school, my schoolwork was poor, I was dropped down a stream in class and there were suddenly a lot of new women in the house - my dad's collection of widows, divorcees and spinsters, who had all identified a gap in the market. One told me that I'd have to move into a different bedroom when she married my dad (she was already re-organising the house in her mind). The poor, deluded fools did not realise what a slippery fish they were trying to catch or how many nets were being cast.
I had always been a little cynical about the existence of God, despite my mum's own strong personal belief and her encouragement for me to accept religion, but there was no God in 1965 and, even if there was, I didn't want any part of him.
During 1966, I took stock and by the time I entered my teens I had a tougher shell – a hard carapace – I was not world weary, but aware, more self reliant and quite angry. I did start to enjoy school again and I made new friends. Uncle Ted was a great friend – a father figure, a grandfather figure; we went fishing, collected wood for the fire and I helped with the cutting and hauling.
My mother's death hit me like a train. It knocked me out of my consciousness for some time. When I came round I was changed, I was a different person. I would have changed in any event, of course, but I don't think I would have been me, as I am today, if my mother hadn’t died when I was so young.
Of course, my experience is not uncommon, death is a part of life and people have endured far worse tragedies. My sister, for example, suffered the death of her daughter - an agony that I can only vaguely imagine.
Fifty years on, I can still feel the pain I felt on February 6, 1965. I was angry at the time and, to a certain extent, I am still angry. Most of all I have sadness and regret - why wasn't my mother allowed a span of life so that she could have seen her children grow up, her daughter graduate, see her grandchildren born and even see what they have become? I am proud of my children; my mother would have had such pleasure in them.
If she was still alive, she would be 91 and I wouldn't be angry if she died at 91, I’d be grateful for her long life.
I don’t bring this box out very often and it’s being put away now, perhaps forever.
