My Dad's voice

My 'OK' post set me thinking about voices, about intonation, cadence and timbre. My Dad died four years ago and of all the things I miss about not having him here, it's his voice. I can hear him as I write. His voice had a wonderful timbre. It had a very distinctive quality that had nothing to do with his Yorkshire accent although the shortened vowels of the North probably enriched it. It was very very pleasant, strong and warm and easy on the ear. There was a slight hesitancy in the voice, a thoughtfulness. There was a landscape to his voice, ups and downs, valleys and hills.

It's funny how senses other than sight can evoke a person so vividly. I can also smell my Dad - specifically I can smell a particular jumper of his circa the 1970s that was a dark mustard colour, probably more French than English. I suppose I got lots of cuddles in the 70s and got to breathe in that jumper. Dad was a farmer so wasn't in his best clothes that often and I remember this V shaped thick knitted jumper that he had for best-casual.

In fact, when we cleared his wardrobe - the one that contained all his best suits and jackets and trousers and jumpers - that was the smell. The wardrobe smelled of him or did he smell of the wardrobe? I think the drawers and interior wood were made from cedar and that is the aromatic perfume that will forever evoke my dad. I wish I could have removed that fitted wardrobe with its beautiful red wooden drawers and reconstructed it in my own house at 88 but alas I couldn't. In fact, my husband bought some leather shoes last year and was supplied with some shoe trees, made from cedar wood. When he unpacked them, exposing their aroma, my dad was there in the room with me. Funny old things smells and voices.

 

Garden inheritance

We have a very big garden. We love it. We are not very good gardeners but we are learning.

My mum's house with beautiful garden (the farm), her home for nearly 60 years, was sold recently. My home physically until I was eighteen and I think spiritually for a long time there after was sold. It's a sad and reflective time for the family.

I have quite a few friends going though similar experiences. One of them was telling me how she spent an arduous afternoon digging up a peony from her mum and dad's garden before it was sold. Her mum had originally brought it from her mum's so it seemed kind of important to continue with that line of descent. It was huge, dug up on a hot afternoon and then transported 300 miles up the motorway, sat on the passenger seat, belted of course. But it was worth it. She can now see the green shoots of recovery - quite literally.

So with that green inheritance in mind I walked round our garden at 88. I noticed the daffodils, peeping up through the grass. I made a mental note to tell the children not to stand on them while their little shoots were still camouflaged amongst the blades of grass. My Dad planted hundreds of daffs along the banking up the drive to the farm and at the end of the garden. Every spring the drive welcomed you in yellow.

I admired our rowan tree that we planted as a spindly whip about three years ago and how big it's got already. My Mum and I bought Dad a rowan when he retired from farming. He then proceeded to complain every year thereafter that the berries were a browny yellow and not red. Funny thing but last autumn they at last turned red.

I looked at the azalea that Mum and Dad bought for us when our daughter was born. I was concerned last year that it did not flower but I have high hopes that it will burst into vibrant fuchsia pink again around about her birthday in April.

I smiled at the snowdrops up already and the whites of the petals just visible packed tightly into their buds. I remember my Mum urging me to dig up spent snowdrops at the farm for my own garden.

I sat in the garden chair in the cool winter sunshine that my Dad made for me. He had carved my name on the top and had done the same on chairs for the children. A friend always jokes with me that they are the Blakeley Family Inheritance Thrones.

 

I walked through the soggy grass. I love cutting grass. I started cutting the lawn at the farm, all those years ago as a teenager for pocket money. Up and down, up and down with the lawn mower, methodically comforting. I complain every year to David that our lawn mower doesn't make lovely lines in the grass. Well it will this year as we have inherited my mum's.

I have quite a few mementos from the farm around the house at 88, memory reminders of a time, a place, a feeling, a person. It would seem I have a huge green and living inheritance too.

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.