A True Celebration!

I feel I need to record here what an amazing day we had yesterday with our family and Mum's friends down in Essex.  If you'd rather not read all about our celebration of Mum's life then please do skip past and I'll be back to tales of travels and creativity soon.  I just need to record it here as part of my blog before I forget the details.  I don't mean to be maudlin just recording a special day.  Please do pass by if you want to.

My DH and I went down to Mum's hometown of Canvey Island this week so that her many friends could say their goodbyes.  We always knew that mum had lots of friends but we were taken aback by the number of people who were able to come to her church yesterday. There must have been near on 100 people, family, neighbours, church members, and friends from her innumerable clubs.  The vicar, Reverend David Tudor, led the most uplifting and joyous service, most of which had been devised by Mum in preparation for when such time came.  David made great play of how pleased he was to finally be able to relieve himself of the papers and photographs that Mum had left with him 9 years ago in readiness for the occasion. (All spoken in jest).  He had carefully stored even a photograph of herself that she had left with him in readiness!  What could have been such a sad event became a truly smileworthy and funny recollection of what made Jessie the person we all knew and love.  Her passion for looking beautiful for every occasion, everything matching, little hat on her head, matching jewellery, matching shoes.

The love of dressing up running over into fun nights with her ladies' club raising money for charity.

I didn't like to tell her that the 'wedding cake' dress pictured has been reincarnated into some stitchy projects by me when she asked about it recently ;-)  I know the witch is her becaue I recognise her hands and feet :-)

More glamorous dressing up for cruising with wonderful friends like the ZigZag Dance Factory who welcomed her with open arms and gave her such wonderful dancing holidays so late in her life.

 David talked about her love for gardening, including 'acquiring' cuttings and seeds from gardens she visited, no stately home garden was safe if she saw a seed she could rehome!  She had been a stalwart of church fundraising, baking cakes whenever required and I have fond memories of frenetic kitchen activity when friends were coming for Sunday tea, baking scones and cream horns and preparing trifle.  You may remember I made a quilt with her aprons which still bear the scars of Sunday morning baking before the days when Mum joined her Church community.

I have to admit I had not been looking forward to the memorial service but the whole church and David Tudor made it a wonderful family affair with great warmth and vitality and even messages from Mum to look forward and be strong.  I have to admit I am no longer a church-goer but St Nicholas Church and its family churches are very lucky to have David and his team to forge such a strong sense of love and community that can lift you up and wrap you in such comfort.  There were tears aplenty but lots of laughs and smiles too, testament to a very strong lady who I and my brother and our DH and DW are very proud to call Mum.  Even her flower club friends had gone to the effort of making two lovely floral displays to flank the altar.

I read on Facebook yesterday a quote that said that however much you think you have prepared yourself you are never ready to lose someone you love and this is so true.  We have all lost
very dear people, family and friends and it never gets any easier.  None of them are paragons of virtue, we are all flawed but we do our best and we all saw the best of Mum yesterday, the great joy and happiness that others brought to her and that she gave to others just by being Jessie.

She only got on this camel for the photo shot, she couldn't quite cope with the thought of riding it lol

Rest in Peace Mum and always in our hearts ♥ ♥ ♥

PS  I've been talking to my friend about yesterday and just wanted to add here that at the end of proceedings they played the Radetsky March by Strauss which Mum had requested.  Quite spontaneously the congregation started to clap in time to the music.  A perfect end to it all.

When you watch the video you will need to wait about a minute while Daniel Barenboim shakes hands with the individual members of the orchestra.  It's worth the wait!  I remember watching this concert with Mum last year.

Happiness

Today is my birthday and I quite often go out for the day but this year I am at home as DH had a cataract operation yesterday so we are keeping things relaxed for a change.  I am pleased to report that the op went well and DH reports some improvement so all is good so far.

Yesterday after the op

This morning

I keep nagging him not to overwork the eye but it's falling on deaf ears!  Actually he has the ability to only use one eye at a time as his left eye is lazy so he is actually resting it while he looks at the screen with the other eye (hope that doesn't sound too gross!).  We have had fun in the past when with friends as he can be apparently looking at one person and actually talking to another.  Bless!

I have never been particulalry religious, especially in more recent years but today the postman brought a letter that may have converted me in an instant.  When my Mum lived in Essex she was a regular churchgoer and supported her church in all their fundraising efforts over the years.  She was part of a great community of friends there.  Last year the church had decided to replace part of an outside wall with a magnificent stained glass window and invited the congregation to make donations to have their names included on the glass.  Sadly I found out way to late about this and Mum was very disappointed that she could not be included alongside all her friends.  Fast forward to today and I received this photograph from the Minister:

My Mum's name is on the purple shard.  The minister had included Mum right at the start and promptly forgotten all about it!  (In the meantime we had sent a donation for the organ restoration instead).  I cannot tell you  how moved I have been by the arrival of this amazing letter and photograph!  My mum always told me it was unlucky to cry on your birthday but there have been happy tears here today.  God or the Cosmos does indeed move in mysterious ways and I can't wait to show Mum the photograph!  Happy Birthday to me :-)

Catching Up - Again

I'm sure I've got loads that I should have blogged about lately but life seems to be keeping me busy at the moment so this may be just a quick post or it could run in to a couple.

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We spent Easter Saturday down with my Mum before bringing her back to stay with us for a while. Saturday morning Mum was helping to decorate her church for the Easter Sunday services. St Nicholas Church on Canvey Island is a 'modern' church built in 1960 and is wedge shaped. My DH has blogged about it here if you would like to see a few more photos.

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Both sides of the roof have been decorated with artworks made by local schools, clubs and individuals. The cross you can see is only in the aisle for Easter.

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The collage above is about 6' x 5' and has obvious echoes of a quilt. The hexagons have been cut from magazines and it caught my eye as we were leaving. There are some lovely colour blends in it. Unfortunately I don't know the artist's name.

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This is one of Mum's two arrangements for the church. She was asked to use only vegetation and no flowers, which is outside her comfort zone but I think she did a lovely job.

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After we had finished at the church we took Mum out for some lunch at a cafe on the seafront. Look at the wonderful view we had.
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Saturday was a bit of a mixed day weatherwise and there was some cloud but the atmosphere looking out over the Thames Estuary was beautiful. I could feel a painting coming on! Shame I didn't have my paints with me! :o)

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We sat and ate our lunch watching the boats going up and down the river on the tide. (There were some bigger ones than this little yacht that was going nowhere very fast with the light wind). I actually learnt to swim from the beach just below this cafe. My brother wasn't impressed! I dragged him back into the water to stand by while I heroically threw off my armbands and swam unaided for the first time! It was a "now or never" moment! lol

Since the weekend I've been enjoying having my Mum to stay and cracking on with my April Journal Quilt. I just have to finish the binding (!!) and then it's done and I'll be able to post it here. I have never done a binding before so I am quite pleased with my little self.

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Is anybody else suffering with a tickly cough at the moment? I am thinking I may have hayfever as it doesn't feel like a cold but I am fed up with coughing. I seem to get these symptoms every year at about this time so I'm thinking there must be some pollen about that doesn't like me. I did manage to get a good night's sleep last night though. I tried my DH's current patent remedy, Vicks vapour rub on the instep of my foot. Don't ask me how but it works! No coughing and no cataarh. Bliss!

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PS My friend Guzzisue sent me this link about the lace embossed concrete on the new Arts Centre in Nottingham that I wrote about last week. I shall update my previous post. Thank you Sue.

Easter trip - Part I

Hi Everyone! I feel as though I've been away for weeks not just a few days. I hope everyone had a good Easter break. I've had a quick whip round the blogs I keep up with and it looks as though you mostly did.

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We had a fairly successful visit to my Mum's. We managed to get rid of quite a bit of stuff for her without anyone falling out! Phew! We made 2 trips to the Charity (Op,Thrift) shops with car trunkfulls of recylable goods and left her with a considerable pile of rubbish for doorstep collection (or failing that a trip to the local tip by a friend). Surprisingly Mum didn't take too much convincing to part with her stuff this time. Mind you, Stewart did suggest we part her from some of her army of skirts, coats and shoes but she dug her heels straight in! No way, Jose!

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I've come home with some of my Nanna's old papers and notebooks that she kept over the years. I didn't know that my Nan rented rooms to paying guests and holidaymakers in the 50's and it has been fascinating to read the messages of Thanks in her Visitors Book. They start out with messages from military personnel at the end of the Second World War and then move on to holidaymakers after that. An ongoing theme in all the messages was thanks for the marvellous food my Nan provided!

In looking through this book I can't help but wonder where these people are today, especially the children who left their messages too.

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While the weather was pretty wintry throughout our stay we did venture outside to the seafront in the hope of catching a few crashing waves! Unfortunately the wind was pushing the waves off the shore so no dramatic photos. However, there were some lovely textures in the fishermen's rowboats secured up against the seawall.

Every time I see these boats lined up like this I think of the paintings of Terry Frost who lived in St Ives. He abstracted the rhythm of the shapes of boats and painted in joyous bright colours.

Blogger has now gone off me and won't upload anymore pics so I'll continue this in another post!