"The hospital sent for us at 2.15pm."
After my dad died in 2010, my sister was clearing out his house – the house we grew up in – and found a small suitcase in the loft.
The case was full of stuff that Mum, who died in 1999, had saved, but had never mentioned. Letters, cards, postcards, photos, programmes from shows, even things like dry cleaning receipts from when she lived in America in the early sixties.
I’m going to write about it all.
Certificate of Blood Donation
Because the 20yo and I donated blood last week…
And since I started with a random thing, I thought I’d continue with some random things.
Bonus Dollar
I googled Godin’s and it seems to be a guitar store. So now I’m wondering if my mum bought my dad a guitar? Seems like a big item to bring back though. Maybe it was a Christmas present for someone else. Or - and this just occurred to me as I was writing - he did have a ukulele. Maybe it was that.
(There used to be a photo of little me playing the ukulele in the nip, but it has been, as my children would say, lost to the mists of time. Probably for the best.)
Provisional Driving Licence
Mum never drove. I can’t remember if she hated it or I have a vague recollection that she reversed into a wall on a lesson? But either way, she never passed (or maybe even took) a test.
My own provisional driving licence was lost when my bag was stolen off the back of my chair (rookie error) at a Leicester Square restaurant called Adam’s Rib. (I googled it and found this 1994 article about the area, which gave me a nostalgia swoon.) I didn’t get another licence for fifteen years.
GPO Resignation
She left, I assume, to go to Boston:
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Mum’s Diary
February 1962
Thursday, 1 February 1962
The hospital sent for us at 2.15pm. My Mother died at 9.20.
[There are no more entries in the diary until 3 May]
Even though I’ve read this so many times, it’s always a gut-punch.
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