 |
| GRANDMA ' SALLY ' ! WITH SHIRLEY, JONATHAN AND JULIAN WHO EVEN MANAGED TO LOOK DISINTERSESTED IN LIFE THIRTY YEARS AGO ! |
 |
| GEMMA WATCHING HER BABY BROTHER JULIAN EATING HER GRANDMA ! |
 |
| GRANDMA WITH JULIAN |
 |
| HOW, I'M SURE SHE WOULD LOVE TO BE REMEMBERED ! |
Shirley and I were away the day when, long before mobile phones were commonplace and less than the size of a housebrick, Gemma picked up our housephone to be asked by the operator if she would accept a 'reverse-charge' call.
Even then they were ridiculously expensive and reserved for absolute emergencies only, like Gemma being so drunk that she had fallen down a nightclub staircase, breaking her thumb and needing her Daddy to fetch her from hospital !
Gemma could hear her Grandmother calling through the operator's voice, "Cooee darling! It's Grandma! Gemma! Cooee! I just want to ask Daddy if he can remember Uncle Frank's middle name !"
Gemma refused to accept the charge and despite hearing her Grandmother's distressed appeal to the operator to try again, put the receiver down !
It later transpired that Sally had phoned many people, using the reverse-charge system as she had no cash and would talk to each person for a long time and not just in this country, doing almost irreperable damage to their phone bills.
Well, a few weeks later Gemma and I went to visit Sally in hospital and in a parlous state, slipping in and out of conciousness and Gemma bent over her slumbering form and speaking gently said, " Grandma! Can you hear me! It's Gemma! Grandma! Wake up! Grandma! Open your eyes! Can you hear me? It's Gemma! "
Sally's breathing altered slightly as she came back to wakefulness and opening only one eye looked up at Gemma and whispered, " You Bastard! " and fell back into a deep sleep!
A short while later Sally was well enough to be moved to a convalescent home for a month before being thrown out for turning her room and the immaculate grounds into a dump and as nowhere else would take her she was allowed to go to her daughter-in-law Jackie in Brighton on the south coast where she had a whale of a time zooming around in her wheelchair and living it up at beach barbecues.
After six weeks there she returned home to find almost nothing left from her lifetime of acquiring but apart from swearing at me down the phone accusing my brothers of throwing away indispensible and irreplaceable collectables she took to tidiness and settled down to being looked after until she inevitably weakened once again and had to be readmitted to hospital.
Shirley and I had taken it upon ourselves to sort out the wardrobes and a mountain of clothes and papers that had built up beside her bed which she hadn't used for years as she preferred to sleep on a settee in the lounge.
As I started to heave the clothing into waste sacks, cash, cheques and share dividends started to cascade out of magazines where they'd evidently been put for safe-keeping and then forgotten about, so I had to start again and gather several year's paperwork together for my brother to use to contact various financial houses for out-of-time payouts.
Shirley, size about twelve, found amongst hundreds of second hand unwashed outfits a size thirty five skirt that mum had asked if she'd wanted a few years before! I mean even if you know someone actually is a size thirty five you don't offer her a size thirty five skirt do you? The truth would kill her, wouldn't it?
Mum had bought it at a charity shop to take apart to remodel or because she thought that a very large neighbour might like it!
Shirley and I were both black with grime by the time we'd finished.
So the house was bleached and tidy and as mum was evidently about to return, some hardwood, mouse-proof furniture was brought in.
Her final hospital stay was in a typically horrible National Health hospital in East London with filthy carpets and overcrowded, understaffed mixed-sex wards
On one family visit, we were sitting around her bed when staff rushed down the ward, closing all curtains before bringing in a coffin on a trolley. Unfortunately as someone was taking off the lid and in the uncomfortable atmosphere that had quickly settled over the place he or she dropped it and it slid under 'our' curtains!
Seeing it, Sally grabbed my oldest brother by the lapels and stated firmly and categorically, " You will be the executor of my will and I want you and all you others sitting here to know that David owes me nothing! Not one penny and it'll be up to you to make sure that ALL past borrowings are taken into account! " And with that the last of her dwindling energy was spent and she sunk back against her pillows.
I looked around at my brothers who were all looking rather uncomfortable and examining their shoes and fingernails!
Mum's spirit remained high until the end and even in her weakened state she still found the energy to help the grim reaper empty the ward by walking around showing her fomidable collection of family photos and describing the layout of every room that she had ever been in, each victim expiring with terror on their faces, some even before she got to them!
Just seeing her approach was too much for many of them!
It's highly probable that some doctors, seeing the dreadful effect my mother was having on their patients, may have eased these poor wretches' last few days with the odd extra large phial of oblivion. I'm not saying that that is what they actually did but it would have been a kind gesture wouldn't it?
I had been quite horrible to my brothers as the inevitable end was approaching by reminding them that 'The Day Of Reckoning' was coming when they would be expected to honestly reveal how much money each had borrowed which would have to be taken into account and deducted from their payouts and added to mine ! Nyuk ! Nyuk ! Nyuk !
Although mum was becoming weaker she still had a trick up her sleeve which she kept for after her very peaceful passing.
And her final trick WAS a corker!
At her funeral the five sons stood together to recite the prayer for the dead in Hebrew but as only my oldest brother had had any training in it, we others were given prayer books containing phonetic translations. So on the nod of one of the resentful Rabbis ( for it was easy to see that they considered us heathens for our obvious lack of religious instruction, which is even worse than being Christians to them ) and on cue we started the recitation of the twenty lines.
All went sort of well for the first line with a vaguely Hebrewish sound being achieved by us all but by the end of the second line we had gone out of sync and dropped back into an unintelligible Cocknee-based drone and by the third line it became apparent that one of us had turned to the wrong page and was reciting a verse which turned out to be for a new-born boy !
The three Rabbis weren't happy at all and angrily stopped the service before restarting it with us all reading from the correct page with the books the right way up and read from right to left, well that's how Hebrew is written though the phonetics were written conventionally so could be read as in English.......to continue !
The sixty or so in the congregation were having trouble containing their laughter as we, burning with embarrassment to the tips of our ears and sweating more than profusely, stumbled, mimed and spluttered our way through, hoping that the ground would quickly open up and swallow US!
It was so bad that very few people could look us in the eye afterwards to offer their condolences and several didn't come back to the house to eat the traditional foods!
Shame that because they missed me standing on a chair, by request and regaling everyone with the tale of mum's medical phone-in with everyone laughing out loud!
I then shot out to the cloisters and put on Sally's gardening blouse, long brown skirt and broken glasses before calling out in Sally's voice, "Cooee Everyone! I'm back!".
I walked back in wearing mum's smile and having shrunk myself to her stature looked convincing enough to cause several ladies to faint and a few men to swear in terror, cross themselves and fall to their knees staring up to the heavens and mumbling the Lords prayer! Odd that really as it was a Jewish ceremony!
I then pressed a pre-prepared CD player button that brought track seven of the Gladiator sound track thundering out and ran cackling maniacally from the room before stripping off and walking calmly back in to a scene of devastation asking if I'd missed anything exciting !
No-one spoke or moved a muscle! They sat, lay or kneeled agog and in silence!
Mum would have been looking down crying with laughter and called out, " Oh that's just my David!"
 |
| SALLY WITH HER FIVE SONS, FOUR OF WHOM I'VE BLANKED IN CASE THEY DON'T WANT TO BE IDENTIFIED AS HAVING ANYTHING TO DO WITH ME! I CAN HEAR SALLY LAUGHING RIGHT NOW ! |
No comments:
Post a Comment