Soaked in Moonlight
What a time to give up smoking!
We sat in an Indian restaurant in East Ham, two of my nephews, their kids and me. It was a hot Tuesday evening and had been an even hotter day. Mums funeral had been at 10:30 that morning and was held in St Patrick’s Church, opposite the council house where she had lived since 1958; the house that I had grown up in during the 50s and the 60s; the house where my dad and I had spent many summers evenings sitting on the back step, shooting at tin cans at the bottom of the garden with the Webley air rifle I had saved up my paper round money to buy; the house where mum had worked for long hours and many years machining ties for a few pennies each; the house where mum knitted thousands of jumpers and completed a million crosswords; the house where my big sisters surreptitiously bought back their boyfriends when mum and dad were out, bribing my silence with cigarettes; the house where we all lived, mum, dad, my four elder sisters, and me.
When mum had to move into the care home the house returned to the council. It was boarded up for a few weeks while they painted it inside and out, chopped down the privets that I had cut since I was eight years old and pulled down the old asbestos garage that one of my eldest sister’s boyfriends had built to store his sports car in but since the 60’s had been full of junk, mostly mine. I could have bought the place at a hugely discounted price at one time. I must admit that I did think about it but in the end I didn’t think it was right to buy council houses so I let the opportunity pass. A new family have moved in there now and life goes on. I hope they find love and happiness there as we did.
I am not and never have been a religious person, but my mum was. She wasn’t overly religious, she never talked about her beliefs, never mentioned ‘God’ or ‘Jesus’ to me, and she didn’t mind my agnostic stance in the slightest. But she was associated, in one way or another, with St Patrick’s Church since the early 50’s, so it was a fitting place for her funeral ceremony to be held. The Vicar (a self confessed x-heroin addict who had found god and taken to the cloth) knew mum for several years and had visited her many times at home and later in hospital. He both cared for her and liked her, and consequently delivered a very lovely eulogy, which described snapshots of mum’s long life. I cried during the service, but I don’t really know or understand how I was feeling, I still don’t. I think it is still too early it hasn’t really sunk in.
The funeral procession followed mum’s coffin towards the new Hainault Crematorium, my sisters and I sitting in silence in the first car. We drove past both Upney and St George’s hospitals where mum had spent much of the last eight months of her life. Onwards, over the A12 and up towards Hainault. We passed the country pub where we had all celebrated mum’s 90th birthday the previous year. A field of yellow wheat drifted by bathed in the July sunshine, mum would have liked that.
I declined the offer, from one of the nephews, to stay the night and drove back to Oxford in silence. There was no traffic along the North Circular and very little on the M40. I don’t know what I was thinking about; none of it seemed real. By the time the Prelude pulled into the Rock car park a big white full moon was low in the clear night sky. It was a mild night and I lay on my unmade bed at the front of the boat soaked in moonlight as I drifted off to sleep.
We sat in an Indian restaurant in East Ham, two of my nephews, their kids and me. It was a hot Tuesday evening and had been an even hotter day. Mums funeral had been at 10:30 that morning and was held in St Patrick’s Church, opposite the council house where she had lived since 1958; the house that I had grown up in during the 50s and the 60s; the house where my dad and I had spent many summers evenings sitting on the back step, shooting at tin cans at the bottom of the garden with the Webley air rifle I had saved up my paper round money to buy; the house where mum had worked for long hours and many years machining ties for a few pennies each; the house where mum knitted thousands of jumpers and completed a million crosswords; the house where my big sisters surreptitiously bought back their boyfriends when mum and dad were out, bribing my silence with cigarettes; the house where we all lived, mum, dad, my four elder sisters, and me.
When mum had to move into the care home the house returned to the council. It was boarded up for a few weeks while they painted it inside and out, chopped down the privets that I had cut since I was eight years old and pulled down the old asbestos garage that one of my eldest sister’s boyfriends had built to store his sports car in but since the 60’s had been full of junk, mostly mine. I could have bought the place at a hugely discounted price at one time. I must admit that I did think about it but in the end I didn’t think it was right to buy council houses so I let the opportunity pass. A new family have moved in there now and life goes on. I hope they find love and happiness there as we did.
I am not and never have been a religious person, but my mum was. She wasn’t overly religious, she never talked about her beliefs, never mentioned ‘God’ or ‘Jesus’ to me, and she didn’t mind my agnostic stance in the slightest. But she was associated, in one way or another, with St Patrick’s Church since the early 50’s, so it was a fitting place for her funeral ceremony to be held. The Vicar (a self confessed x-heroin addict who had found god and taken to the cloth) knew mum for several years and had visited her many times at home and later in hospital. He both cared for her and liked her, and consequently delivered a very lovely eulogy, which described snapshots of mum’s long life. I cried during the service, but I don’t really know or understand how I was feeling, I still don’t. I think it is still too early it hasn’t really sunk in.
The funeral procession followed mum’s coffin towards the new Hainault Crematorium, my sisters and I sitting in silence in the first car. We drove past both Upney and St George’s hospitals where mum had spent much of the last eight months of her life. Onwards, over the A12 and up towards Hainault. We passed the country pub where we had all celebrated mum’s 90th birthday the previous year. A field of yellow wheat drifted by bathed in the July sunshine, mum would have liked that.
I declined the offer, from one of the nephews, to stay the night and drove back to Oxford in silence. There was no traffic along the North Circular and very little on the M40. I don’t know what I was thinking about; none of it seemed real. By the time the Prelude pulled into the Rock car park a big white full moon was low in the clear night sky. It was a mild night and I lay on my unmade bed at the front of the boat soaked in moonlight as I drifted off to sleep.
posted by Outcast Poet | 3:31 pm
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