Fiona's Quiet Life

it never stops,
it was almost unbear­able, there they were four beau­ti­ful young women in their late thirties and early forties, with their faces crumpled with tears and unhap­pi­ness and it was to me, as if they were three years old and hurt­ing and i could not do any­thing to make it bet­ter.
my daugh­ters and their cous­ins accom­pa­ny­ing their grand­mother on her last jour­ney through requiem mass to the graveside.
i went into a sort of shock when i saw that one of the men lower­ing the coffin into its rest­ing place was my grand­son, i wanted to pull him back shout­ing he’s too young , he’s just a boy, but of course he is not. in Scot­land he is of mar­riage­able age at 16 so why would he be too young for a pall bearer.
i wondered if the priest would ever stop talk­ing and let them lower the coffin , peter was shiv­er­ing with cold apart from the strain of hold­ing on to the strap and wor­ry­ing about it slip­ping out of his hand.

but it was a beau­ti­ful ser­vice and the grand­chil­dren did their parts beau­ti­fully
and the party after­wards was a good one, she wanted us to wear bright colours.….…..not easy for a per­son who has beige hair beige skin and wears beige most of the time but i found some­thing after try­ing on lots of skirts.…..and the food and drink were great as was the company.

i cant bear the thought of my girls being upset like that when i die , maybe i shall start to be a hor­rid old woman now so they will be glad to see the back of me

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I think i am aller­gic to funer­als.
remem­ber, after Basil dying i had at least seven com­mon colds in quick suc­ces­sion, well,
first there was the funeral on the last day of last year, then there was my old­est friend dying a few hours after i saw her a couple of weeks ago…funeral was last Thursday.…then my ex-mother –in-law dies last Tues­day, she was a won­der­ful, if scary woman.….Scotland’s first lady provost.…she scared the hell out of teen­age me mar­ried to her son and first born, but in fact she was like a mother to me and i learned a lot from her.we are all dev­ast­ated, even though she was 92 and it was expec­ted. in fact the priest had been giv­ing her the last rites when she came to and asked him just what he thought he was doing. she would go when she was ready.
i have a stink­ing cold, i am sure it is funeral related.
yes­ter­day was the 3^rd anniversary of Basil’s death, i went up to the cemetery and took him some stones from my travels. the snow has melted so no more snow­balls for him just now.……it is amaz­ing just how many people i (A shiksa) know in glasgow’s Jew­ish cemetery .

there are two wed­dings in the off­ing this year though, my nephew is mar­ry­ing in a build­ing with no roof.….i have an umbrella/parasol and a cousin of basil is mar­ry­ing on beach in Israel …i have same parasol.

on home front.….…no workmen…hooray.
the rail­ings have been replaced after more than 60 years.….cant remem­ber if i have said this before.….……they were taken down to ‘help’ with the war effort, few were actu­ally used it was more to make people feel they were help­ing. cost a for­tune to put them back,but I con­sole myself with the thought that they would have rus­ted by now and these are guar­an­teed to least at least till i pop off.

cant remem­ber what else i was going to say.

so i shall go back to plant­ing things i bought in the local garden cen­ters . they look bedraggles so were cheap but the whole garden looks bedraggled after all that snow and ice so they fit in nicely.….…i look bedraggled too.

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