The everyday blog of Richard Bartle.
RSS feeds: v0.91; v1.0 (RDF); v2.0; Atom.
6:21pm on Monday, 27th July, 2020:
Anecdote
I took the day off work today to go to a funeral in Bury St Edmunds (or Cremate St Edmunds, given the circumstances).
The funeral was of my father-in law, who was 97. He'd gone downhill following a fall just after Christmas in which he broke his hip and his arm. He survived the surgery and six months in a care home where we couldn't visit because of Covid-19. In the end, he died of pretty well everything except Covid-19.
The funeral was an unnatural affair, because we all had to wear facemasks and keep socially distant. If there's ever a time you want to hug someone, it's at a funeral. Also, only his family attended, although as he'd outlived all his friends that would probably have been the case even without the current pandemic.
I couldn't have wished for much more in a father-in-law. He and my mother-in-law visited on a weekly basis while our children were growing up, and he was a big part of their lives. He would do odd jobs in the house and garden, too, some of which (such as cutting 20 metres of 2-metre-high hedge) he was still doing when he reached 90. OK, so he once almost took my eye out while we were installing a loft ladder and he let go of an immensely powerful spring arm at an inopportune moment, but fortunately it missed by a whisker. He himself had amazing recuperative powers — he'd shrug off 5mm-deep, 3cm-long gashes in his arm and when I saw him again a week later he'd have healed up. I've never known anyone else with that kind of regenerative ability outside of a book or a film.
I knew him for 40 years but for reasons of my own social awkwardness always referred to him in relative terms: "your father", "your grandad", "Gail's dad". I never once called him by his name.
It was John.
Latest entries.
Archived entries.
About this blog.
Copyright © 2020 Richard Bartle (richard@mud.co.uk).