ailbhe | Goodbye, Jean @ no. 18

We left the house today for the first time in two weeks (to get the kids out of doors, mainly) and saw that there was a lot of stuff outside Jean's house. Jean's partner Ray died while I was pregnant with Linnea and she was living alone there; this morning there was a lawnmower, hoover, some shelves, etc outside. I had a bad feeling about this. And when we were on our way back we saw her son putting furniture into his car.

Jean died 4 weeks ago, after her second heart attack in a month. They knocked on doors to let people know about the funeral, but no-one on this street is in during the day, so almost no-one answered.

I'm not surprised and not terribly saddened. It's just another thing. Rob and I went in to Jean and Ray on the morning of our wedding, to show them our outfits; we took photos against a backdrop of their rosebushes. Ray died while we were in Sweden, that winter, and Jean told us several weeks later. Jean came to see us the day we brought Linnea home from hospital, because I was excited and wanted a visitor, and we've seen her very rarely ever since. There are a few reasons... she smoked, and we were often germy, and she was elderly. She'd been in poor health, largely from nursing Ray through his long-drawn-out final illness, and I didn't want to add to it.

Last summer I cleared weeds from the garden next door to hers, to stop them spreading into her garden, because she kept a beautiful, very stringently tamed garden.

Jean had lived here 51 years. She had 6 children, of whom 4 survived, and raised them all in the house two doors down from ours. She never asked nothing from nobody; when her children were small she salvaged carpet from a fly-tip site and cleaned it up. Her daughter greatly embarrassed her by boasting proudly of her mum's ingenuity to the neighbourhood kids! She and her husband had their differences, and after his death she became involved with Ray. Their relationship was something I admired and aspired to. Aspire to. Jean had her babies in the local maternity unit, close enough to walk to while in labour, or at home. She breastfed them, too. They were poor but happy, and later quite comfortably off and happy.

She borrowed Rob's Anne McCaffrey books because she had a dragon obsession. She collected figurines and jigsaw puzzles of a dragonish fantasy nature - wizards and sorcerers also welcome.

I suppose we'll never get the various books she borrowed back now; I can't ask her relations to search for them. Since we'll never get Jean back, I don't suppose the books matter very much.

But I'm glad the pain in her spine is gone now.