Mary Fitzpatrick, RIP
Haven't posted on here in ages. As mentioned before I've been transferring my attentions, such as they are when I blog, to my new 'professional' Wordpress. If I mention I consider myself half a cartoonist then people who've been reading this should be able to find the new blog, mostly containing continuing Justice League reinventions thus far, without my having given a terribly usable Google backtrack for future fans to find my personal life.
But this? This is my personal life in nature.
May 2006, I was at my computer at around 10am when my parents phoned with the news about Herbert James Fitzpatrick. He was 91. And my world stopped, for a while. I was numb, overwhelmingly so. It took hours before my brain finished rebooting.
Nimmy was my rock, growing up. More even than my parents, he was my touchstone on what was right. I always got the impression Dad had to do what I do, to think things through, before he could do the right thing. Nimmy had a moral compass installed from the off. He was good with numbers, with pre-microchip technology, with woodwork. He was a MASTER with carpentry, in fact. What he produced is beautiful and much is still in the family today.
Nan was wonderful, when I was young. But I didn't feel that connection. In fact, the distaff side of my family are all a little further from connection with me, which is presumably my fault rather than theirs; I'm the common factor there, after all. Don't get me wrong; I loved her. I love and admire my mother. I love and respect my sister. And any of you who've met me in person know how I feel about my nieces.
Last week Nan had a stroke. It took some time to recover, and I received an email from my mum just yesterday saying that the doctors had confirmed she was out of the worst of it, that she just needed to recover to the point where she would walk (tricky business even before then for a woman with over a decade's growing back trouble and four hip replacement surgeries in her past.)
Last night, in her sleep, the doctors turned out to be wrong. She had another stroke, and I have to suspect at around 4:30am, that being when I came awake for no reason I can deduce. Abduction based on legends of passings within families leads me to the idea that she went when I woke, or rather, vice versa.
I woke up this morning to an email from my mother. We've had a quick Skype chat. We all agree that she was marking time before this happened, and that she will be happier now. We all knew her mind had been slipping since shortly after Jim went, nearly six years ago now. My mother's Fridays will be staggeringly less stressful in the near future, and from now on.
And part of me is getting an attack of Catholic guilt that I'm not as broken up over this as I was - as I am, when I remember him - about Nimmy. It's not fair, it's selfish, and I'll be past it soon, I'm sure, and when I am I'll be able to remember her properly.
Part of me is sorry for Asta Kimpton. Of all my grandparents' closest old friends, she's the only one still living, and she's outlasted all her family. In recent years, all she had was Mary, was my Nan.
I met her a few times; she gave me a beautiful gift that I keep hidden away for feat of losing it. It's not really practical for other things.
There was a generation I knew only through these three and their stories, but it was a generation that shaped the villages of North Wales around it; I can point to a dozen or more major changes driven by my grandparents and their friends. It was a generation that had a deep and profound influence on me at first, second, and third remove.
My grandparents were all but the last of it, and it is all but gone.
Of one thing I can be glad; the last time I spoke to my grandmother, on Boxing Day, we'd gone to see her as a surprise. She was delighted to see us, and we said goodbyes. The last message I sent her was that she was in my thoughts, after the first stroke. By good fortune, I won't have that regret.
And now, I just wait for that to sink in.
But this? This is my personal life in nature.
May 2006, I was at my computer at around 10am when my parents phoned with the news about Herbert James Fitzpatrick. He was 91. And my world stopped, for a while. I was numb, overwhelmingly so. It took hours before my brain finished rebooting.
Nimmy was my rock, growing up. More even than my parents, he was my touchstone on what was right. I always got the impression Dad had to do what I do, to think things through, before he could do the right thing. Nimmy had a moral compass installed from the off. He was good with numbers, with pre-microchip technology, with woodwork. He was a MASTER with carpentry, in fact. What he produced is beautiful and much is still in the family today.
Nan was wonderful, when I was young. But I didn't feel that connection. In fact, the distaff side of my family are all a little further from connection with me, which is presumably my fault rather than theirs; I'm the common factor there, after all. Don't get me wrong; I loved her. I love and admire my mother. I love and respect my sister. And any of you who've met me in person know how I feel about my nieces.
Last week Nan had a stroke. It took some time to recover, and I received an email from my mum just yesterday saying that the doctors had confirmed she was out of the worst of it, that she just needed to recover to the point where she would walk (tricky business even before then for a woman with over a decade's growing back trouble and four hip replacement surgeries in her past.)
Last night, in her sleep, the doctors turned out to be wrong. She had another stroke, and I have to suspect at around 4:30am, that being when I came awake for no reason I can deduce. Abduction based on legends of passings within families leads me to the idea that she went when I woke, or rather, vice versa.
I woke up this morning to an email from my mother. We've had a quick Skype chat. We all agree that she was marking time before this happened, and that she will be happier now. We all knew her mind had been slipping since shortly after Jim went, nearly six years ago now. My mother's Fridays will be staggeringly less stressful in the near future, and from now on.
And part of me is getting an attack of Catholic guilt that I'm not as broken up over this as I was - as I am, when I remember him - about Nimmy. It's not fair, it's selfish, and I'll be past it soon, I'm sure, and when I am I'll be able to remember her properly.
Part of me is sorry for Asta Kimpton. Of all my grandparents' closest old friends, she's the only one still living, and she's outlasted all her family. In recent years, all she had was Mary, was my Nan.
I met her a few times; she gave me a beautiful gift that I keep hidden away for feat of losing it. It's not really practical for other things.
There was a generation I knew only through these three and their stories, but it was a generation that shaped the villages of North Wales around it; I can point to a dozen or more major changes driven by my grandparents and their friends. It was a generation that had a deep and profound influence on me at first, second, and third remove.
My grandparents were all but the last of it, and it is all but gone.
Of one thing I can be glad; the last time I spoke to my grandmother, on Boxing Day, we'd gone to see her as a surprise. She was delighted to see us, and we said goodbyes. The last message I sent her was that she was in my thoughts, after the first stroke. By good fortune, I won't have that regret.
And now, I just wait for that to sink in.