My sister's funeral was on Thursday. Being November it was - unsurprisingly - dull and cold, but then surely funerals are meant to be something of a grey overcast occasion anyway? Maybe.
There looked to be quite a lot of people there, especially as Leamington Parish Church is enormous - more the size of a cathedral. The priest who read the eulogy had been friends with my sister for a number of years, and had in fact phoned me the previous week for some background information on what it had been like growing up together. In fact although I'd quite readily and naturally assumed the role of the brat little brother plaguing his big sister at every opportunity, as adults we got on well together and I don't recollect that we ever fell out with each other. Listening to it, the eulogy I thought captured my sister's character very well, unlike some I've heard where I've sat there wondering if they were talking about the same person! It did strike me though that I hadn't realized the full extent of my sister's ill health, perhaps understandably as it wasn't something she'd ever really confided in me.
There followed a burial at Warwick cemetery, alongside the grave of her youngest son who died somewhat tragically five years ago. That's a little unusual these days, I think: most people are cremated, not least because of the number of graveyards that are actually full. I shed a few tears as I listened to the priest reciting the "ashes to ashes, dust to dust" prayer and I was struck by the finality of it all, throwing a handful of earth down onto the coffin.
A couple of our cousins made the trip up to the funeral, acting as a poignant reminder of how my sister had always tended to carry on our mother's tradition of keeping in touch with "the family" - though in all honesty I'm not sure she'd had that much actual contact, or at least not until fairly recently. We said goodbye at the end, promising that must stay in touch *as you do* though how the reality of that will turn out remains to be seen.
Once the grave is finished with the headstone in place, I shall perhaps go and visit it. I used to visit the cemetery at Kenilworth, where my parents' ashes are interred, quite regularly at first but over the course of the last twenty-odd years got out of the habit, basically because I suppose I ceased to feel the need to. I guess it's something that's a very personal decision: to my knowledge my sister never went there, but I shall probably go again now if only to try in a strange way to come to terms in my mind with the impact of what's happened.
Saturday, 26 November 2011
Sunday, 20 November 2011
YouTube MyTube
One of YouTube's less endearing habits is the periodic and frequent removal of some of your favourite videos, generally on some spurious "violation" grounds, leaving you with a patently insincere "Sorry about that" blank screen message. While the user who uploaded a video has the perfect right to delete it if they so wish, I must say I find some of the so-called 'acceptable use' policy removals irritatingly arbitrary to say the least. So like many people I've been in the habit of copying many of my own favourites: a lot of other sites specifcally provide a download facility on payment of a subscription or membership fee and it's something of a mystery why YouTube hasn't - it seems like it could be a nice little earner for them?
The inevitable result of course is that quite a number of sites and programs have grown up out there which will let you copy streaming video - most for free. I've tried several over a period of time: the one I've tended to use most is Real Player, which has a nifty little 'Download This Video' toolbar which pops up alongside the clip thumbnail in your browser. Except that I've found it gives a fairly high failure rate in terms of unplayable clips, and it hardly ever works at all with anything on X-Tube.
But the other day I came across VideoGet, which I have on test at the moment. It boasts an impressive list of supported sites, and has a built-in file format converter. It's shareware and limits you to 20 downloads after which you have to pay: I've used it twice, and if I find it succeeds on another 18 where the others have failed, I shall probably shell out the $24.95 and buy a copy.
Tuesday, 8 November 2011
Last of the line
The news I'd been half-expecting all last week came this morning: my sister died during the night. She passed away very peacefully, which I'll always be grateful for, and considering the quality of life which would otherwise have laid ahead for her, it was probably for the best. My nephew faces the sad task of making the necessary arrangements, but I'm helping him out a bit by getting in touch with our cousins to pass on the news - or trying to.
Over the years, of course, our "extended family" has inevitably dwindled. When I think back to all those boyhood Christmases with rows of cards from aunts and uncles including their respective offspring - and to the occasional big get-together - it rather brings it home to me that I'm one of a decreasing number of survivors. The aunts and uncles slowly became fewer (albeit living till their nineties in a couple of cases) and while I have a couple of cousins' phone numbers, others I'd long ago lost touch with and don't recollect whether my sister had any recent contact or not although she did tell me a while back she was embarking on doing a family tree!
Of our own immediate family, it now just leaves me - my mother and father having died some twenty years ago. I remember having distinct nightmares as quite a small boy that my mother would die suddenly and I'd be left all alone in the world! Silly when you look back on it, and I suppose like all toddlers I really thought the end of the world had come if I suddenly found I'd lost sight of my mum in a shop or somewhere. When in 1988 it happened for real, it did somewhat to my surprise take me quite a while to get over her death but I daresay the passage of years brings with it the realization that human lifespan is a finite quantity and I'm maybe a bit more philosophical about it all now.
So if I look behind me now there's no longer anyone there holding me, but somehow I sense their spirit is still very much alive - and I guess always will be.
Over the years, of course, our "extended family" has inevitably dwindled. When I think back to all those boyhood Christmases with rows of cards from aunts and uncles including their respective offspring - and to the occasional big get-together - it rather brings it home to me that I'm one of a decreasing number of survivors. The aunts and uncles slowly became fewer (albeit living till their nineties in a couple of cases) and while I have a couple of cousins' phone numbers, others I'd long ago lost touch with and don't recollect whether my sister had any recent contact or not although she did tell me a while back she was embarking on doing a family tree!
Of our own immediate family, it now just leaves me - my mother and father having died some twenty years ago. I remember having distinct nightmares as quite a small boy that my mother would die suddenly and I'd be left all alone in the world! Silly when you look back on it, and I suppose like all toddlers I really thought the end of the world had come if I suddenly found I'd lost sight of my mum in a shop or somewhere. When in 1988 it happened for real, it did somewhat to my surprise take me quite a while to get over her death but I daresay the passage of years brings with it the realization that human lifespan is a finite quantity and I'm maybe a bit more philosophical about it all now.
So if I look behind me now there's no longer anyone there holding me, but somehow I sense their spirit is still very much alive - and I guess always will be.
Tuesday, 1 November 2011
Three score years and ten
In the couple of weeks since I wrote about how I'd learned of my sister's stroke, I wondered how she was progressing, rather optimistically hoping that no news was good news. I did become increasingly conscious of an urge to go and visit her - not the easiest of journeys to do from where we live by public transport, although by no means out of the question. Spurred on by an almost supernatural feeling of my late mother telling me to get off my backside and get over there (and it was Hallowe'en yesterday, after all!) - and a more rational tip-off from a friend of a friend who'd seen her recently, I made the trip over to Warwick hospital yesterday afternoon.
Thinking back, it must be almost two years since I'd last seen my sister in person. The extent to which she'd aged made it seem more like twenty. The stroke has evidently done an awful lot of damage. That, coupled with her deteriorating health generally, and the frail figure looking up at me from the hospital bed I'd have guessed, had I not known, might have been in her nineties. She recognized me and knew who I was: some of the time, as I told her about some of the things that had happened, she responded briefly but almost normally - but there were quite long periods when she seemed to retreat into a world of her own, occasionally saying something which probably made sense to her but didn't seem to relate to anything - almost as if her brain was missing a cog or two and kept slipping out of gear.
She's being really well looked after: the staff all seemed very kind and sympathetic, and she's been getting visitors. But I learned from my nephew who as luck would have it happened to pop by and have a talk with her consultant, that short of a miracle there isn't going to be anything much they can do for her - she's on borrowed time.
I still have the mixed emotions I wrote about a fortnight ago, perhaps felt even more acutely now. I'm glad I went, especially as it may turn out to have been the last time I shall have seen her. Exactly at what point nature will take its course I've no way of telling: seventy isn't a particularly advanced age by modern life expectancy standards, of course. But it seems likely she may just pass away peacefully in her sleep which I guess isn't a bad way to go.
Thinking back, it must be almost two years since I'd last seen my sister in person. The extent to which she'd aged made it seem more like twenty. The stroke has evidently done an awful lot of damage. That, coupled with her deteriorating health generally, and the frail figure looking up at me from the hospital bed I'd have guessed, had I not known, might have been in her nineties. She recognized me and knew who I was: some of the time, as I told her about some of the things that had happened, she responded briefly but almost normally - but there were quite long periods when she seemed to retreat into a world of her own, occasionally saying something which probably made sense to her but didn't seem to relate to anything - almost as if her brain was missing a cog or two and kept slipping out of gear.
She's being really well looked after: the staff all seemed very kind and sympathetic, and she's been getting visitors. But I learned from my nephew who as luck would have it happened to pop by and have a talk with her consultant, that short of a miracle there isn't going to be anything much they can do for her - she's on borrowed time.
I still have the mixed emotions I wrote about a fortnight ago, perhaps felt even more acutely now. I'm glad I went, especially as it may turn out to have been the last time I shall have seen her. Exactly at what point nature will take its course I've no way of telling: seventy isn't a particularly advanced age by modern life expectancy standards, of course. But it seems likely she may just pass away peacefully in her sleep which I guess isn't a bad way to go.
Sunday, 30 October 2011
Now then, now then, now then... guys and gals!
I was saddened this weekend to read of the death of Jimmy Savile. Definitely one of life's great characters, the perennially tracksuited figure, dripping with gold jewellery and resplendent with fat cigar is one of my most enduring childhood recollections - and long before the word "chav" was even thought of!
I think back to all the nights I spent listening to that distinctive voice on Radio Luxembourg, my transistor radio sneakily hidden under the bedclothes when my parents fondly imagined I'd gone to sleep! To that very first "Top of the Pops" way back in the year I took my O levels, and then to the Sunday lunchtime Radio 1 "Double Top Ten Show" with its challenge of 'points' awarded for remembering the hits of years gone by: I think I still have some old reel-to-reel tape recordings of some of them.
The stories he used to tell of being a porter at Leeds Royal Infirmary, his fundraising exploits for Stoke Mandeville - and of course, all those Marathons he ran! In an age increasingly dominated by revelations of sleaze amongst the rich and famous, it's a refreshing change to have come across a genuinely good person.
"How's about that then?"
I think back to all the nights I spent listening to that distinctive voice on Radio Luxembourg, my transistor radio sneakily hidden under the bedclothes when my parents fondly imagined I'd gone to sleep! To that very first "Top of the Pops" way back in the year I took my O levels, and then to the Sunday lunchtime Radio 1 "Double Top Ten Show" with its challenge of 'points' awarded for remembering the hits of years gone by: I think I still have some old reel-to-reel tape recordings of some of them.
The stories he used to tell of being a porter at Leeds Royal Infirmary, his fundraising exploits for Stoke Mandeville - and of course, all those Marathons he ran! In an age increasingly dominated by revelations of sleaze amongst the rich and famous, it's a refreshing change to have come across a genuinely good person.
"How's about that then?"
Saturday, 22 October 2011
Like I've never been gone...
After a break of almost four months, I returned last week to this year's series of Italian classes. I had, of course the best of intentions - doing a bit of practice and a bit of revision during the long summer holiday, but needless to say that never quite materialized and I returned with a definite feeling of apprehension that I'd have forgotten most of what I'd learned last year. Surprisingly, I found I hadn't. I won't say I slipped back into the routine effortlessly, but it all seemed surprisingly familiar and I found myself remembering more than I thought I would. I was helped by the fact that this year's course doesn't just pick up from where last year's left off, the first couple of weeks anyway acting in the nature of a refresher - so yesterday we were practising the perfect tense. I still find listening and understanding dialogue not the easiest of things to master, but I daresay that comes with practice. Speaking is definitely coming with practice, and I think I may be at long last shedding my schoolboy reluctance to take part in oral lessons!
Anyway, the reward came yesterday in the form of a certificate for the successful completion of last year's studies. I did in fact get a grade A, although the grade isn't shown on the certificate - perhaps everyone gets an A? I must admit I wasn't expecting anything quite so formal and grandiose, almost worthy of a graduation ceremony, I thought. I don't suppose I shall ever use it for anything, but 44 years after I made a first hesitant attempt at studying Italian, it's definitly nice to finally have something to show for it!
Anyway, the reward came yesterday in the form of a certificate for the successful completion of last year's studies. I did in fact get a grade A, although the grade isn't shown on the certificate - perhaps everyone gets an A? I must admit I wasn't expecting anything quite so formal and grandiose, almost worthy of a graduation ceremony, I thought. I don't suppose I shall ever use it for anything, but 44 years after I made a first hesitant attempt at studying Italian, it's definitly nice to finally have something to show for it!
Saturday, 15 October 2011
If we knew then what we know now.....
I received the rather disturbing news earlier in the week that my sister had suffered a stroke. My nephew - her eldest son - rang up: she'd been in hospital a couple of weeks, having been admitted with a urine infection. I suppose in a way, if you're going to have a stroke then a hospital is one of the most convenient places to have it, but understandably he didn't really see it like that and was more than a bit miffed that they'd only just told him.
The prognosis is not good. It's apparently affected her left side and she's currently unable to get out of bed, but it's also affected her speech as well as making her a somewhat confused and disorientated. He's of the opinion she'll have to go into a nursing home, and while I know that the hospital staff and therapists will do their best to salvage what they can from the damage the stroke's done, her health was so poor to start off with, that they're going to have their work cut out. She was already set up and about to move into a place at a sheltered housing complex before this happened.
Perhaps irrationally, I feel more than just a bit guilty. We weren't particularly close as kids, and with her being seven years older than me I did more than my fair share of being the brat little brother of my big sister! We weren't really alike temperamentally, either: she was rather given to moods - bouts of the sulks, the silences and the tears - and in that respect took after my father, whereas I inherited my mother's "what you see is what you get", with the occasional blazing row all forgotten about twenty minutes later.
An unhappy marriage and eventual divorce took its toll emotionally I suspect and in the couple of decades since our parents died, her asthma (always worse than mine) deteriorated and she started to suffer falls and resulting loss of mobility - as well as a bowel condition which needs operating on, but with a general anaesthetic making it too risky to do. What with our mother's bad chest and chronic bronchitis, and father's (mild) stroke and eventual fatal heart attack, she seems to have inherited all the family ills.
So... why do I feel guilty? Our childhoods were different: I wasn't packed off to boarding school, although I did as a teenager grow to resent having been shunted around the world from pillar to post, unable to form any lasting friendships. I'm certainly not proud of the immature way I joined in my parents' constant derision of my sister's choice of boyfriends and I guess that over the years I could've seen a lot more of her: we don't live that far away and a phone call - even a long one - isn't altogether the same as contact in person. But... what's done is done.
As far as the rest of it goes, I count my blessings. As an adult, you choose your partner(s) and your lifestyle and I've been lucky on both counts. I know I'm fortunate in enjoying relatively good health, although the reasons for it are a lot more obscure - diet, underlying enotional state, inherited characteristics.... who knows? I don't have the capacity to care for my sister in her old age. Part of me wants to - psychologically - a sort of weird role-reversal of when she looked out for me as a kid, I suppose. However, I'm just going to let bygones be bygones, offer help where it's needed and accept that there are things that I can't change, much as I might want to. The Fates spin out the metaphorical thread of life for us and we just have to accept the knots and tangles until one day it's eventually cut.
The prognosis is not good. It's apparently affected her left side and she's currently unable to get out of bed, but it's also affected her speech as well as making her a somewhat confused and disorientated. He's of the opinion she'll have to go into a nursing home, and while I know that the hospital staff and therapists will do their best to salvage what they can from the damage the stroke's done, her health was so poor to start off with, that they're going to have their work cut out. She was already set up and about to move into a place at a sheltered housing complex before this happened.
Perhaps irrationally, I feel more than just a bit guilty. We weren't particularly close as kids, and with her being seven years older than me I did more than my fair share of being the brat little brother of my big sister! We weren't really alike temperamentally, either: she was rather given to moods - bouts of the sulks, the silences and the tears - and in that respect took after my father, whereas I inherited my mother's "what you see is what you get", with the occasional blazing row all forgotten about twenty minutes later.
An unhappy marriage and eventual divorce took its toll emotionally I suspect and in the couple of decades since our parents died, her asthma (always worse than mine) deteriorated and she started to suffer falls and resulting loss of mobility - as well as a bowel condition which needs operating on, but with a general anaesthetic making it too risky to do. What with our mother's bad chest and chronic bronchitis, and father's (mild) stroke and eventual fatal heart attack, she seems to have inherited all the family ills.
So... why do I feel guilty? Our childhoods were different: I wasn't packed off to boarding school, although I did as a teenager grow to resent having been shunted around the world from pillar to post, unable to form any lasting friendships. I'm certainly not proud of the immature way I joined in my parents' constant derision of my sister's choice of boyfriends and I guess that over the years I could've seen a lot more of her: we don't live that far away and a phone call - even a long one - isn't altogether the same as contact in person. But... what's done is done.
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