Writing letters, part two

My mother’s letters were always quite short. Notes mostly, about her week, who she had met or visited. In October 2000 she was very busy with the British Legion annual Poppy Appeal. She had been a member of the Women’s Branch of the British Legion since the 1950’s when my father had joined the Legion.

 ‘From tomorrow I will be spending as many hours up the roads round here as possible with my Poppy Box. They have no one else to cover it as he died. We are trying for 20 million. It was 18 million last year.’

Grace had moved to Eastbourne in 1995 to a sheltered housing block of flats that my sister had helped to locate for her and my father. They had moved there from Lower Kingswood, close to Reigate in Surrey. They had been living in a mobile home which was their retirement home. It was also the longest time in one place that they had ever lived in and during their marriage they had lived in over 20 places. My father had been treated for tongue cancer in 1995 and as they were getting older with none of their children living close by, my sister had persuaded them to come to Eastbourne where she lived and worked so that she could offer more support. It was quite natural for her to reconnect with all the activities that she enjoyed.

Most of the letters that I have kept and saved date from this time. Consequently, they cover the ten years from arriving in Eastbourne and when she died in 2006.

Annoyingly, most of her letters were undated. I have had to try and study them again to find a rough order of when they were written. After my father had died, a year later, Grace celebrated her 80^th birthday. However, it was her 85^th birthday party that many of her extended family turned up to in Eastbourne.

‘It was lovely to see you all and the party was lovely too. Our ladies are still talking about it. I have still got all my flowers round me and the aroma when I enter my front door is homecoming.’

This was five years after my father had died. They had shortly arrived in Eastbourne in 1995 not long after my father had been treated for cancer of the tongue. We had sent them a gift for their new flat, a tablecloth and napkins.

‘Thankyou so very much for your lovely tablecloth and napkins. They are not on yet as we haven’t finished the room. We really love it here. I go swimming once a week. But I don’t leave Dad for longer than an hour at a time. I can’t talk about him over the phone. Until he has had this special X ray, we don’t know what is wrong with him but he must be bleeding from the inside as he is anaemic. He is sleepy all the time. No energy. It is very sad he can’t appreciate our new surroundings.

 One of Grace’s longer letters at that time was when he was being cared for at a local hospice. He had periods of respite there. The letter was dated 29^th January 1996. 

Earlier that month I had visited at short notice on the advice of my sisters, they knew he didn’t have much longer with us. We gathered at their flat, my brothers Peter and Gordon and myself. He was able to be lifted out of bed and he sat with us for one of our last meetings with him. Certainly, my last meeting. We joked and laughed and got him to tell us a family secret that confirmed my later research into our family history. It still is a secret unless you have studied the records that I have shared on this blog.

‘Thankyou for your letter David, you boys did wonders for Dad. He wanted to see you all. I don’t think he will be able to know people much. He has deteriorated.  He turned down going to the Hospice on Tuesday, but we managed to get him in on Wednesday. They may keep him more than a week. The nurses love him.’

The weather that month was atrocious all over the south of England. There were times when she got a lift, up the steep hill to the Hospice, but there were others when she walked alone in the freezing cold. In the same letter she tells me of another family funeral, one of my aunts, which my sister attended on my parents’ behalf.

My father died shortly after that letter.

Not long after his funeral, I suggested to my mother that she should come up to Scotland for a break. She had never visited me and my family since we had moved to Glasgow 9 years previously.

‘Dear Liz and David, I am looking forward to the 12^th April. All the ladies talk about it. I am well in with all of them. My main reason for writing is, don’t forget to arrange for yourselves to have a few nights out together as I can be baby sitter.’

 I bought her a flight ticket so that she could fly up to Glasgow from Gatwick. We made all the arrangements for my sister to put her on the flight and went to the airport to meet her. She arrived in all her glory on the back of an electric assist vehicle with a bleeping light. We loved having her with us and took her out on trips to see the sort of places that she would enjoy. She also had time with her grandchildren who she didn’t get to see very often.

‘Dear Liz and David and Jamie and Rachel, Thankyou for the lovely holiday. I had with you all. I did enjoy it and the places I went to. Everyone thought I looked better for the change. It must also be the bracing weather! Since then, the days have  gone very quickly.’

This does not accord with what she described to me as a little bowel problem she was having but she was managing it. It didn’t interfere with her holiday. And she sounded very bright in that letter of thanks.

Shortly after I was contacted by my sister who said that Grace was having to go into hospital for a corrective bowel operation, had I not realised that she was ill?

A week after returning to Eastbourne, Grace wrote to me from Eastbourne General Hospital.

‘Thankyou for your lovely letter received this morning. Wasn’t it a bit of luck that it didn’t happen while I was with you? I am writing with a drip in my hand and please note that yours is the first letter I have written! Since I was taken ill. I am getting on fine. Everyone is pleased with me and I had my first cup of tea here since last Saturday. I had porridge for breakfast. Always a rebel, Peter came this morning out of visiting hours! I have had no shortage of visitors, and I am surrounded with flowers. I thanked the surgeon for doing the op. It was a long one. I don’t do things by halves. I must wait until Tuesday to find out if there was anything nasty lurking with the bit of bowel they cut off.’

It would not be long before she was back to her regular activities. This included swimming, walking the length of the Eastbourne promenade and always busy with the British Legion. On one occasion toward the end of the 1990’s, Grace and her Women’s Branch had invited the late George Allegiah, famous BBC journalist, to give a talk. He had accepted the invite on the basis that he would be able to call in to Eastbourne on his way back from an assignment in Europe, driving from Dover to the engagement. He arrived in the hall and went straight to the kitchen where he said that had not eaten for some time and could he get something quickly? Grace immediately offered him a plate of her infamous rock cakes, and he ate two of them. Only members of Grace’s family who had ever eaten her rock cakes would understand how extraordinary that was.

Grace Carver in the late 1990’s (from the authors collection)

As the few remaining years went by, Grace’s letters became shorter, postcard sized notes. We kept in touch a lot by telephone. Our last phone call was a week before she died in 2006. She had a busy week lined up with cake making for various events, her usual duties around the sheltered accommodation where she lived, and culminating in the wedding of one of her grandchildren. She never got there.

These excerpts from her letters are just a few from the many that I have saved, and they show a snapshot of the sort of woman that she was. There is more of this to come in the future.