same old same old

we have just got back from a visit to my dad and his wife. this is his third wife so i don't call her my step mum. his second wife, who brought me up, is my step mum.

my dad looked better than he did last time. he is 80 years old and for someone who spent a large part of his life trying to end it, he has survived remarkably well.

his wife was in something of a state. as soon as we could get a moment away she told me that, when she had gone to see her grandchildren, my dad had rung a woman they know and asked her round. this woman was a friend of my dad's wife so rather than going round she had told my dad to act his age and told my dad's wife what had happened. my dad's wife had told him he was below contempt and that she would divorce him. to which, true to form, he had said that she was having an affair and that this justified what he had done. his evidence for the affair was that when he was in hospital last, having had a stroke, he had seen her emerging from behind the curtains crying, with a doctor.

my dad also said that, if she did divorce him he would kill himself. regular readers will know my dad's history. my dad's wife said that if he killed himself she would not come to his funeral and neither would i. she may have been wrong here. i might just have had enough of covering up for my parents and might just be tempted to go along and let rip.

anyway, she has not divorced him and he has so far not killed himself. i had thought the times of dreading the phone ringing had maybe subsided. but maybe they haven't. however i am a lot tougher now and i have other priorities. at the end of the day i have never been important enough to stop my dad killing himself and i doubt that much has changed.

so i wait and see...

june

on thursday i went to a funeral. it was my oldest friend's mum. my friend and i have known each other since we were 12. we have been through the mill together. through our terrible wild teens, with her anorexia and my depression, through my dad's suicide attempts. through her mum leaving and expecting my friend to look after her younger siblings and her devastated dad. her son was the first baby i ever held in my life. my friend was there when my son was born. so we are close.

i haven't been back there since my friend left home at 17. there are out of town shopping centres and ring roads and it took ages find the council estate where my friend grew up. but her nan's house has the same things in it that i remembered. my friend's sister lives next door to her with her 3 kids.

my friend's mum was a gypsy. the funeral was a proper gypsy funeral with black horses with plumes and a glass carriage to carry the coffin through the village to the church. everyone who could walk walked behind the carriage. my friend's daughters in full-length gothic black lace dresses walked with my friend and her husband. my friend's brother, whose health has not been the same since he fell off scaffolding after taking speed and hit his head, which led to a downward spiral into epilepsy and drink and drugs and pain, still managed to walk with the carriage.

my friend's son is a bit wobbly on his legs so he went in one of the cars with my friend's grief-stricken nan, should never have had to bury her own daughter. my friend's dad, who was left with the children and the shock and the shame, but who never stopped loving this woman, went in the car with them.

the village ground to a halt as we walked past. the men digging the roads switched off their drills. a party of school children stood in awed silence. the horses shied a bit at an oil tanker that had stopped. my friend's mum would have loved it all - bringing things to a halt and being the centre of attention.

the service was in the village church. it was all the same as i remembered. the old yew tree with branches that have rooted and made a cave under its skirts was still there. we stood while the coffin, with its flowers saying "sister" and "mum" was lifted onto the shoulders of the men in top hats and taken into the church.

june's oldest brother read a piece. then the vicar read the eulogy which my friend had written. the church echoed with wracking sobs. i was probably the only person not crying. the readings told the story of a woman who had put her family first, who lived for them. my friend had made her peace with her mum.

but i remembered a different side to this complex woman. someone who had kept my friend so short of food when she was a little girl that she had to steal bread and which eventually meant that she developed rickets. someone who made my friend do all the housework while she went to bingo. someone who thought that the way to justify leaving the family was to tell my friend that the man she was running away with was my friend's biological father and her true love. this news devastated my friend, who had always thought the man who brought her up was her father. she developed crippling panic attacks and anorexia.

the man who her mum thought was her true love turned out to be a nasty piece of work who left her tied to the bed in his house one weekend, with no water and no way of escaping. so her mum told my friend that a different man was actually her father. now i am older i wonder how anyone could be this confused about something so major. but her mum was only 16, and no doubt wild.

as i sat in the church, looking around at the faces of the people, i wondered how many of them had memories like this. june took a lot of secrets to her grave with her. but i think the paternity of my friend is not in any doubt. now she is older you can see that the man who brought her up is her biological father. the family resemblance is very strong. it echoed round the church in the grieving faces.

we walked back through the village to the graveyard. it is high on a hill, away from the river. an avenue of horse chestnuts shone against the perfect blue sky. the awful moment when the coffin was put in the grave came. my friend's nan had to be held up as she was near collapse. the family threw roses into the grave. i was given a rose too. i have been around so long i suppose i am almost family at times like this.

we walked back to my friend's nan's house. there was food for an army. my friend's mum would always be able to calculate how many bridge rolls for a particular number of people. it was a skill that used to amaze me. there was a picture of june among the food. it was as i remembered her when i first met her, smiling, shining. before bad decisions took her away from her children.

june was a member of mensa. she could calculate accumulator bets at the bookies faster than the counter staff. she loved bingo. she was lively and fun. my friend undoubtedly inherited her intellect and her spark. my friend's life has been tough but she still survives. and laughs. and reads palms. this is the legacy june gave her.