So far this past fortnight we’ve lost three friends.
Cancer, kidney failure and more cancer.
They are gone but not forgotten.
When my father died I was encouraged to go see him. My editors on GFL said I would be sorry if I didn’t attend his funeral. So I schlepped all the way to Luton.
It was an ugly crematorium, with a bad electric organist and a Christian ceremony. His second wife had organised it. Forgetting that he came from an East End Jewish family. Not taking into account that his surviving relatives were about as au fait with Ancient and Modern Hymns as I am with the Hindu funeral mantra ॐ महादेवाय विद्महे रुद्रमूर्तये धीमहि.
Nevertheless my father went down to a rousing rendition of Hymn Number 27, that old favourite ‘Amazing Grace.’ The old git and I providing the alto and tenor parts.
Nobody organised a eulogy so I was pushed to the dias to say something on behalf of my 83-year-old father.
‘He was a fucking bastard.’ I said.
I don’t remember anything else.
As I get closer to death I am less frightened. I used to wake in the middle of the night panicking about not being here. About the blackness of it all. About the lack of sentient activity. I’ve now come to terms with the end and I am at peace. I’ve no idea whether or not life still goes on, in a differing form, but there’s no escaping the inevitable.
My mother died in 2012.
She was in a home in Brighton.
Taken into hospital after a bout of ill health, we went to visit her.
‘Where am I?’ she asked.
‘In Brighton.’
‘What am I doing in Brighton?’
She had mild dementia.
‘You’re in a little Jewish nursing home, by the sea. You always wanted to live by the sea.’
‘A totally alien sentence came out of mothers mouth.
‘I fucking hate the Jews.’ she shouted.
‘Where do you want to be?’
‘I want to go home.’
‘To the East End?
‘Yeah.’
‘You haven’t lived there since 1956.’
I wanna go home.’
It’s now full of Bangladeshis.’
‘I fucking hate the Bangladeshis.’ she shouted.
My left wing leaning commie mum had lost it.
‘What about Brixton?’ I asked provoacatively
‘Mmm’ she thought.
‘It’s full of blacks.’ I continued.
‘I don’t mind the blacks as it goes.’
Then she pointed to me and said
‘You’re black.’
My nephew was horrified by the interaction. I thought it was funny.
My mother died when she was 90. I was in Ibiza organising a quiz for the Groucho Club.
The members were rich and famous, and not really my cup of tea.
After three hous sleep my phone clanged.
‘She’s dead’
The nurse, on the end of the line, was crying.
‘One minute she was holding a cup of coffee, I turned away and she was gone.’
I had never cancelled anything in my working life. I didn’t know what to do.
Bernie Katz, the Prince of Soho, put his hands on my shoulders and said
‘Go home, you idiot’.
Those rich and famous members got me home with their generosity. They bought me a plane ticket, organised flights, provided taxis and wished me well.
Books and covers come to mind.
I got back home by the afternoon and organised her funeral.
The very last thing she said to me was
‘Can you hear the children mewing.’
My spiritual friend told me tha at the end of life the veil thins and people see and hear all sorts.
My mother had organised her own funeral plan we had just enough to buy a cheap coffin.
That’s what she would have wanted.
She saved everything fron yoghurt pots to silver sweet wrappers.
‘What’s the point of spending a fortune on something that’s going to go up in flames.’
We honoured her wishes.
It was in a little chapel in Brighton..
‘Thank God you told me she had a pace maker’ said the now dead funeral director.
‘She could have blown up the whole Crematorium’
The chapel was full of people from her long life. I ordered boxes of sunflowers. Everybody laid one bloom on top of her coffin. It looked wonderful.
She went down to the kids singing, Stevie Wonder, and a slide show compiled by the old git. She loved her son-in-law to death. If you’ll forgive the pun.
There wasn’t a dry eye in the house.
After the service the whole congregation went to the ‘Setting Sun’ pub. The irony was lost on me.
My mother is dead but most certainly not forgotten.
The only thing she left me was her bureau with its pull down desk and three stacked bookshelves.
The smell of the old books reminds me of her.
A life comes and goes.
The cliché that life is short is a cliché because it’s true.
90 years of being my mother ended in a flash. She ended up in one room in a Jewish nursing home in Brighton. Her lifes accumulations were given to ‘Help The Aged’. I kept a coat and a blue cardigan which hangs on the back of the hall chair. She’s always with us,
Her plants redistributed, and a few quid to my brother and I.
I used mine to go on a retreat in Glastonbury.
She had 90 years of struggle, in between a family who loved her.
90 years of knitting and letter writing, of reading and complaining. She came and went but she is not forgotten.
When I am in distress I do call on her.
With this kidney fuck up I have been near to death three times – my old mum pipes up.
‘It’s not your time yet. So fuck off and get on with it.’
You can take the woman out of the East End but you can’t take the East End out of the woman.
Even in death.