Memories

I heard this week of the death of a lady I knew when I was out at work. My last post was as House Manager in a private charity who had more than 100 flats in a beautiful area.  The flats were originally for people who had worked in the church all their lives and had no home to fall back on in their retirement and had never been paid enough money to save anything for their future but as the rules in the UK have changed during these past few years the flats now have to be made available to anyone.  However when I worked there the original rules applied and the comunity of people had held many and varied positions, mostly abroad and the retired doctors, nurses and nuns had worked in some very strange and barren places.  One lady found it difficult to sleep so I got into the habit of calling in to her flat for a cup of cocoa when on my last round of putting out lights and checking doors and windows.
She had married a clergyman when a very young girl and they went to work on Baffin Island in the snowy wastes of Canada long before we had any modern communications. It took a month for her letters to reach her parents in Devon.  Her husband made visits to his parishioners on a dog sleigh and she had many gory tales of when the new dogs arrived for training and would fight each other in a most viscious way until one emerged as leader of the pack.  Her first baby was born on the sleigh as her husband raced her over the frozen lake to the nearest settlement; her son came early and suffered a slight brain damage.  One night I met her youngest grandson who was on a visit and told him that his granny and I had many long talks in the night - 'what on earth do you find to talk about with her?' he said 'she's led a very quiet life.'    I would like to bet there will come a time in that young man's life when he wishes he had talked to his granny and heard the fascinating stories of his grandparents life before they reached their old age and became invisible to the young.
RIP Rosina - THANKS FOR YOUR MEMORIES.