Dearest Mum has passed

[Ray96]

Dear Ray,

I am going through the same thing at the moment dad's eye was slightly open in hospital and there was me thinking it was a chest infection.

My thoughts are with you.

Love

MaNaAk

Yes exactly the same with my mother, I was convinced that it was just a chest infection, eyes slightly open towards the end, after coughing a fair bit in the late afternoon and a gurgling sound at times, and finally about half an hour of very shallow breathing before she passed. I keep thinking if only I'd called an ambulance earlier, she was still alert when the coughing fits were going on and looking at me, not in any pain, although she was holding her chest while coughing.

I am still in shock, but have kept busy sorting lots of things out, had lots of support and a fair few drinks that have helped. They are coming to pick up her bed, chair, hoist, this afternoon.

Such sad times, my thoughts are with you too MaNaAk.

 

[Ray96]

Your emotions will do the strangest things to you at a time of bereavement. When my son died aged 13, I woke in the night because I thought he would be feeling the cold in his grave...... so much of us wants them still to be here....... treat yourself gently - you have done a wonderful job caring for your Mother.

That's so terribly sad, I can't imagine what it's like losing a child.

My great grandmother lost her two young boys, only the oldest, my grandfather was left and he ended up committing suicide before I was born. It effected the family badly in many ways, including losing their businesses, although she never talked about it.
Anyway, when I was very young I always saw this big old picture of this lovely looking, smiling, blond boy hanging up in her lobby, sailors outfit like the children wore before the 1st world war. Well I still have that picture and its still hanging up of little Johny aged 4 or 5 who passed away around 1908.

Years later I came to realise what her internal fears must have been, and why she was so over the top protective of me when she used to take me to the park to feed the birds, and not let me play rough and tumble with the other children, which is something that I desperately wanted to do.

 

[Ray96]

Thanks everyone, once again, from the bottom of my heart for all your kind words.

 

[maryjoan]

That's so terribly sad, I can't imagine what it's like losing a child.

My great grandmother lost her two young boys, only the oldest, my grandfather was left and he ended up committing suicide before I was born. It effected the family badly in many ways, including losing their businesses, although she never talked about it.
Anyway, when I was very young I always saw this big old picture of this lovely looking, smiling, blond boy hanging up in her lobby, sailors outfit like the children wore before the 1st world war. Well I still have that picture and its still hanging up of little Johny aged 4 or 5 who passed away around 1908.

Years later I came to realise what her internal fears must have been, and why she was so over the top protective of me when she used to take me to the park to feed the birds, and not let me play rough and tumble with the other children, which is something that I desperately wanted to do.

I work as a genealogist - and on the 1911 census people are asked how many live babies they have had and how many are still alive.
The saddest one I ever came upon was an elderly couple who were reporting on the census that they had 19 children and only 8 survived. I could just visualise them sitting around the kitchen table and saying to each other " Do you remember the one after so and so, he only lived a couple of weeks, then there was....." and so the list would go on. Then I remember this was before innoculations, polio vaccine, antibiotics etc etc - and they did not expect all their children to live.
Such sad and very hard lives they led........

But I also feel some satisfaction that here in 2019, I am thinking of this couple from so long ago, and feeling for them in their grief - being remembered even by a stranger, is a wonderful thing.

 

[Ray96]

I work as a genealogist - and on the 1911 census people are asked how many live babies they have had and how many are still alive.
The saddest one I ever came upon was an elderly couple who were reporting on the census that they had 19 children and only 8 survived. I could just visualise them sitting around the kitchen table and saying to each other " Do you remember the one after so and so, he only lived a couple of weeks, then there was....." and so the list would go on. Then I remember this was before innoculations, polio vaccine, antibiotics etc etc - and they did not expect all their children to live.
Such sad and very hard lives they led........

But I also feel some satisfaction that here in 2019, I am thinking of this couple from so long ago, and feeling for them in their grief - being remembered even by a stranger, is a wonderful thing.

I love history maryjoan, people generally don't realise how tough life was particularly before WW1, the slums, diseases, children having to work in coal mines and in factories, workhouses. Then when they were barely old enough sent off to fight in terrible wars, just kids many of them. I also found out that the worse workers conditions at the time of the Communist revolution in Russia in 1917 were not in Russia, but in fact were here in Britain.