I've lived a life

My Dad died 4 years ago, funnily enough he was 88. I hope you'll have realised by now that I have to include '88' some where in my posts. He had had a very bad stroke which sadly didn't take him there and then. He'd always said he'd be very happy to die in his bed and leave in a wooden box from the lovely home and sanctuary he had lived in for nearly sixty years. Well the bugger of a stroke didn't let him die in his bed but made him linger for about 3 weeks in hospital.

I placed a framed family photo on the unit next to him in the hospital. An image of us all taken a few summers before this catastrophic event. It shows my mum and dad, my brothers and their partners, nieces, nephew, my auntie, cousin and husband, my little family unit too. It portrays fifteen smiling souls. It wasn't for my Dad that I positioned it there so strategically but for the doctors and nurses to see that my dad had had a life before this. It seemed important to remind them that the sum of this man was not what they saw before them lying in that bed.

I went to see my mum in the residential home the other day. Frank Sinatra was performing love songs. It was a big gig, risen from the grave and choosing a small residential home in the north west of England for his comeback gig. Mmmm....the CD continued.

I'd been sat with my mum chatting a little and being silent a lot (when you go see someone everyday it's sometimes hard to think up new conversation) when I realised that three of the residents were singing along to Old Blue Eyes. Isabel in one corner was just audible but was singing Frank's lines just before he actually sang them. Pitch perfect she was not but word perfect she most definitely was. I then realised that Dora in another corner was quietly half whispering half singing the lines just after Frank had crooned them, followed swiftly by Lucy in another corner. Each quite unaware of the other. Frank and his girls. This went on quite poignantly for about three songs. Each doing it their way, having their own tete a tete with Mr Sinatra.

How did they know the lines so well? Where had they danced to these melodies? Who had they danced with? I was reminded that the sum of these ladies was not all before me, sat in these old people's chairs in a residential home in the north west of England.