Moving right along

Mother in the home

Mother is doing fine, perfectly happy as far as we can see.

The staff are great, very attentive.   

 Packing. 5 bed house, every room in a mess.  Boxes and boxes all stacked up. Some to take, some for Sally Army, some for friends, some for rubbish.  Will I remember which box goes where?

The house is an unusual triangular shape, with a wide rather 

glorious front garden, and this at the back. 

Back garden

We will try to make the best of it and turn it into a pleasant place to sunbathe, which Henry did for hours on end when he was a tour guide. Keeping up his tan and recovering from the stress, no doubt.

Getting decorators    

We have been calling in companies and individuals, wherever we can find them, to get quotes.  Finally a group of possibles are materializing and we are expecting them to begin shortly.  That means they will finish (stating the obvious) and that means we will move. There will be a day, not too long from now, when we will hand  keys to the agents to find tenants, say goodbye to mother, scoop up the cat and Henry, and go.  Of course the hardest bit will be for Henry, saying goodbye to his wife of 73 years. There is no way of telling her what is happening.

He has aged so much in the last 6 weeks.  Unsteady, clumsy, frail.  But his spirits are good and he is up for it.  Good for him.

My office, as was

 This whole thing has taken me by surprise. I thought it would be ages till we would do the house and all that entails. I assumed they would have died first… but it is happening now. It is a massive job, not only my stuff to sort but my parents!

I have gone through some of my mothers papers.

When she was 18 she came to London, as a refugee from Hitler. The British let her in as could do cleaning. If you were willing to do that, work in service, you could come. Even if you were qualified in your profession, you must go into service.  She was a qualified seamstress, trained at the leading Vienna fashion house, but hey, what does that count. Her own mother refused to leave Vienna, so her father left her there and went to Shanghai, where they didn’t care if you were Jewish. I found amongst mothers’ papers a couple of letters from her mother: very sweet and promising to be together soon. That didn’t happen, she was caught and sent first to a ghetto, then to a concentration camp. I didn’t know the letters existed, it was very sad to read them.  When we have a good opportunity I will show them to my grandchildren and explain to them what happened.

My son, Laurie, and his family are moving this summer too. He has been working as an interpreter in Bavaria, and now is moving to Geneva to work freelance for the UN.  He is beginning to get more interesting conference work and traveling quite a bit, but he goes to Egypt and soon will travel to Nigeria.  I don’t like that at all.  There is loads of security for these events, but how can I not be uneasy?