Wednesday 28th October 2020

I read somewhere that we die twice. Once when our physical bodies passes away, and the second is when the last person on earth who remembers us, passes.

I think about this from time to time.

I once met the oldest person, at the time, in the UK, Ada Rowe, who died on January 11, 1970 but was born on February 6, 1858. She was 111 years old. I can remember visiting her house and being intorduced, but not really understanding.

But she had been born just after the Crimean War had ended, and she had known people who had been alve in the 18th century, easy to see by going back just two generations we are at a quite distant time already.

We hope that people will remember us for the good things about us, rather than the bad, I suppose.

I remember little about Ada other than she still lived in her terraced house in the centre of Lowestoft on Milton Road, near the High Street. I remember she was old, so old she was famous.

Yesterday we said goodbye to Betty, Jen's Mother. I thought about her life and the things she had seen in her long life.

Betty was born on Armistice Day 1919, one year after the Great War had ended, and she always associated her birthday with that, one of the hymns sung yesterday was one she remembered.

She was born in Newport, Wales in 1919, and moved to London after her Father died when she was just 15 years old. A few years later, war broke out and she met the love of her life, Fred, and moved to his home town, Bolton once the war ended. She raised three children, whilt working too, one job was as a clippy on the trams.

Wednesday was a grim day all round. Rain fell hard, then harder all day. It was a good day to have a funeral. Who wants to have warm sunshine on such a day?

I did a few hours at work, then stopped at half ten to have a shower and get ready.

The drive to Denton doesn't take long, just along the A2 past Lydden and Coldred. We arrived half an hou early, and watched as the rain got harder and harder, then a few mourners began to arrive.

Numbers are limited to 15 for a wedding, but 30 for a funeral. Makes no sense to me, but there you go. There was ten of us, three of her family had come from Wales, including her sister who is five years younger. They made them tough in South Wales.

The herse arrived, and Jen. We wait in the rain as the coffin was taken out, then file in behind Bet, half the pews were in use, and we used less than half of those.

Not much else to say, really, other than Betty is now at peace, and out of pain, which is all that matters. Her final weeks were filled with pain as her body failed, that is now at an end.

We drove back to Whitfield to be with Jen, rain fell in Biblical amounts, turning the roads into rivers, then into lakes, we splashed our way back towards Dover.

We stayed the afternoon to be with Jen and just talk.

And that was that.

We arrived home with the rain still falling and getting dark well before five.

I cooked aubergine for dinner. We had two good sized fruit, and they filled us up.

We had the radio on, I followed the football until nine, when I was too tired to care who won or lost. We went to bed.