Down to the Bones

Just got off the phone to my 81 year old Auntie Eileen, her razor wit in tact, wishing her a day late Happy Mothering Sunday. Her responses are always the same when I ask what she did for any occasion, special or otherwise, "There's just the two of us, pet, your uncle Geoff and I. We don't bother with anything much, it's just us." After this, I could just let everything go, send hugs and kisses and hang up, but instead I hang on. I hang on because I know she's just getting warmed up and there'll be some nuggets of family lore around the corner as long as the battery on the phone lasts.

Auntie Eileen and uncle Geoff were pub landlords years ago at the Wheatsheaf in the remote countryside of Kent where she was the one woman barmaid-cum-cabaret hostess, never short of a funny story or saucy quip. Her son, my cousin Steve inherited her gift for words and became a newspaper reporter who's probably heard all the old stories before, but I haven't and now my dear old Mum is gone, Auntie Eileen is the family lore keeper, whether she likes it or not. I'm hungry for it and I think she relishes any excuse to natter, make someone laugh, have a connection. We all need that. That's why I call.

She confesses she's losing patience with poor old uncle Geoff who has early stage Alzheimers at age 84. He forgets things like where the dishes go and she's afraid to take trips in the car, so they don't bother driving anywhere nowadays. Luckily they can walk to the shops easily and she sends him out for things like bread and milk and he comes back with them instead of shoe polish, and doesn't end up in the neighbor's house by mistake, all good signs. They both still smoke and I can hear the failing breath power, as if she's speaking through a veil and I know it's a waste of time to mention the benefits of quitting to someone her age. Her energy is waning, she tells me: "I'm awful tired of housework. I don't do the dusting as often as I used to. Don't have any kids' sticky fingers to worry about." This may be code for letting things go. I tell her about my own domestic lapses and we laugh about going without underwear if we're behind with laundry and how we like the freedom of skirts instead of pants. She's petite in build and says wearing trousers made her feel she walked funny, "Like Charlie Chaplin. Next thing you know I'd a been acting just like him and a'".

I bring her up to date and describe some of the highlights at my father's memorial service a couple of weeks ago. She said she's sure he would have enjoyed himself if he'd been there and wondered, too, if his widow might have been feeling a bit unwell that day, serve her right... I tell her about all the wonderful music and dancing we enjoyed, with bagpipers and Benny Goodman recordings. She called it a reverse wake.

She asks if my kids are musical and tells me her mother, (my Grannie Mac)was famous for yodeling though she herself had never heard her, so we guessed Grannie must have scaled the vocal alps for friends at the pub, though people didn't used to sing in the pubs in those days she tells me. So either Grannie was so oiled that she didn't care (most likely) or sang in other people's parlors (wakes and yodeling sounds unlikely). Grannie Mac kept alive the old tradition of making your own entertainment at home and said there was no excuse for not having a musical instrument because no matter how poor you were, you always had the poker and the fireplace grate to riff on. She tells me how they used rib bones for making soup and afterwards Uncle Johnny would play the cleaned off bones like clappers, the way others sometimes played the spoons. My son might like to know the rhythmic family history since both my father and he played drums in bands. Proving yet again that genetics account for more than you care to imagine.

By the time we were nearing the end of the call, as my low battery signal was beeping, she was livelier and had a lilt in her voice that hadn't been there at the start. My inner nervous feline was purring as if something in my bones had righted itself. She's not a religious person, avoided and shunned the old faith of her ancestors for most of her life, so I was touched when she said God bless you. I'm thinking I need to call her more often.