Fading from Memory

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Tuesday 8 September 2009

Fading From Memory

By MP on Tuesday 8 September 2009, 23:59

This is the final entry.

In just the last few days we have executed the will, celebrated Connor's wedding, and I have revisited our old home in Istanbul. So, with that for a final flourish, I think the blog is now closed.

The final estate came to quite a tidy sum, a sum that mum and dad would have been surprised at, I am sure. It seems to me to be a sound legacy, a significant inheritance for all of us, and one that mum and dad would have been very pleased and proud to have bestowed. Good on them, I say. They were good parents in life, and in death provided as they had in life.

Rachel received all mum's jewellery in addition to her quarter of the rest of the estate. She has been passing items of this collection to the other females in the family, as mum wished. This week she had the opportunity to pass on some more, a pair of emerald earrings, to Vanessa, Connor's wife. The presentation was made at a dinner Derek hosted just a few days before the wedding, and all of us were present: Derek and Janet with their family, Rebecca and Connor; Rachel; me; and Greg and Regan with Cassy. Vanessa's family were there too. Rachel was overcome with tears and so Janet actually presented the earrings, then all the women started to cry. Most of the men looked on with some bemusement, but we all knew that here was a poignant moment that mum could never know - the first marriage of one of her grandchildren, and the welcoming of a new woman into the family.

And that was a thought that kept coming back to me throughout the day of the wedding: 'wouldn't mum have loved to have seen this?' And dad would have been pleased too, I am sure, just not quite as very happy as I know mum would have been. But it is all just idle fancy now. They are both dead, and though their lives came to a stop, everyone else's just keeps going, and there is no sense of stopping. How can there be?

On the way home I had a long stop-over at Istanbul, and succumbed to the temptation to leave the airport and visit our old apartment building, providing I could find it. It is about 35 years since we lived there, and not only was it mum and dad's home for perhaps two years, but our maternal grandfather also stayed there for quite a while.

Turkey has changed tremendously since then. The place has a palpable buzz now, and seems fast and businesslike. Everyone I encountered spoke English, and it was easy to arrange a car to take me to Yesilyurt. This is a seaside suburb, close to the airport where dad worked. I was dropped off at the Polat Renaissance hotel, a towering glass building which was not there in our day. Under an occasional smattering of raindrops I set off to walk along the seafront, looking for the seawall that Greg and I walked upon nearly every day, the small beach where we played, and the apartment building where we lived. So much has changed that I found it hard to get even a rough idea of where I was. I had to ask directions and was sent back the way I came. I passed the hotel and began looking on the far side. Almost immediately, I got a sensation that I was in the right place. I rounded the hotel's walled-off section of shore and found the old sea wall, just as I remembered it, just a bit more weathered, perhaps. I walked along it to where the beach should be only to see that the hotel itself had been built right over the top of it! It then seemed amazingly coincidental that this was where the driver had chosen to drop me off. I turned back and went in search of the apartment building and, with a good sense of direction and a memory of the rough layout of the streets, I found it.

The building looked as if it hadn't been touched since we left. It was quite badly run-down, and probably the worst looking in the immediate area. I took photos of the front and back, seeing the window to the bedroom that Greg and I shared. Rachel also stayed here for a while. We all had such good memories of this place, but something strange has happened to them. It is bitter-sweet seeing the changes here. On one hand I am pleased to see the area develop and thrive, but I am sad to see features like our little beach get obliterated. I so dearly wanted to be able to show my photographs and tell the story of my return to this spot to mum and dad, but I can't. I'll show Greg and Rachel, and see how much they can remember, and we will reminisce about the place. We'll recall the day our grandfather accidentally ordered 10 loaves of bread from the little 'hole in the wall' bakery. It has gone now, and the street now has a Citibank and many shiny clean shops in its place. We'll remember dad's odd friend from work, and how mum disliked him. We'll talk about the many trips we made from the local railway station, walking from the apartment down roads which now have proper kerbs, but didn't back then. Many memories of places and times, events and travels, and mum and dad; Istanbul left a strong impression on all of us.

But in these and other memories, mum and dad are now fading and becoming just parts of the whole.

2 comments

Monday 27 July 2009

Post scriptum

By MP on Monday 27 July 2009, 02:55

Dad's 88th birthday came around and I thought about him a lot, before, during, and afterwards. Instead of the usual three-person birthday celebration we normally hold this time of year, we got together on Rachel's and celebrated just hers. Mine somehow got excluded from the agenda, too.

We all reminisced. Rachel is sad that though she has thought of mum often since December, she has never felt that she was 'there'. Apparently mum had said that if she could make contact after death, she would. I don't believe in any form of afterlife except how one lives on in other people's memories, but I recognise the sadness in this and, if it continues, the slowly dawning realisation that a person we knew for all our lives has really and truly gone.

Last year was awful. And this year has not felt like an improvement at all, despite my hopes, and despite all working out quite well. The Supreme Court granted us probate without any bother over the lost codicil; the deposit for the house has already been received, and there is reason to celebrate: Connor, the only grandson, is getting married in September.

There has been other sad news, which affected me quite deeply. I learnt via Google that a friend from school had died in February, quite suddenly, of a heart attack. Greg and I had known him from when we were perhaps four and six, respectively. He was always jovial and appeared full of life, and death just does not seem to fit my memory of him. I contacted his younger brother, who had in fact been my best friend for several years. I commiserated, and I told him of mum and dad's death. In his reply he had some more shocking and peculiar news; his mother had died on the same day as ours. So they had had two deaths in three months, just as we had. Somehow I kept thinking how peculiar it was that when he and I met as boys only just starting to go to school, our mothers were destined to die on the same day, several decades later. I know the thought makes no sense, but still...

So, mum and dad have both now had their first posthumous birthday, and we are already closing in on the anniversary of dad's death. You don't forget the dead at all. They just keep coming around. It'll be dad in September, just before the wedding, and on Connor's birthday. Then mum in December, then mum again in April, and dad in July. And then I'll have another birthday, and try to remember what dad was like at my age - what kind of exercise was he doing, how much hair did he have, where were we living, and so on. And on and on.

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Tuesday 2 June 2009

The end game

By MP on Tuesday 2 June 2009, 16:35

The last few months have been spent, in part, slowly working through the process of tidying up.

All the known major investments, insurance policies and accounts have been, or are very close to being, liquidated and consolidated in the one bank account. Only mum and dad's UK premium bonds, which amount to a mere 36 pounds, are still outstanding, and I am in the process of searching for old bank accounts in the UK, those we may never have heard of, through www.mylostaccount.org.uk.

The house has just been sold for a good price, within four days of being on the market, and despite the deep economic trough we keep hearing about. I am sure that the improvements Greg organised for the house were very instrumental in facilitating the sale. We had tenants in residence for just a few months, but it seems that one or more of them wanted to leave and the remaining one couldn't afford the place on his own. He asked to terminate his lease early and, given the difficulty we had had getting regular rent payments from him and his co-tenants, we agreed quite readily. We were rather unimpressed, to be honest, not least with their casual attitude to mail intended for mum and dad. Some of it appears to have been just thrown away, and at least one letter was used as notepaper.

When we hired a solicitor to do the conveyancing we also asked him to look after the application for a grant of probate. How this works in Australia is, I imagine, fairly similar to how it works in other countries. If the estate is significant enough, or if the wills are sufficiently complex (or non-existent), then the administration of the will must be granted by a clerk of the supreme court. Greg and I, as executors, have had to apply for this power to be granted to us before we can dispose of the house. The completion of the sale is therefore now hanging on us having probate completed. There was been one hiccup in the process, however. When we had a codicil added to mum's will, the family lawyer took the original for safe keeping, and provided me with a copy. Since then, he retired and passed his practice in toto to another law firm. When our solicitor contacted them to ask for the codicil they reported that they were unable to find it! Now, providing everyone plays sensibly, we should be able to get this sorted out, since no beneficiaries were changed, only the names of the executors, and for very transparent and understandable reasons (Derek being in the UK, Greg and I being here). However, it does complicate the process, requiring additional explanations to be written, evaluated, acceded to, and then acted upon, best case.


Despite this, from what I hear of others who have been in a similar situation, we are having a dream run with this process.

In the middle of these considerations, mum's 87th birthday came and went, in April. I remembered on the day, unlike last year, and wondered what was appropriate. Nothing, really. There's no grave to attend, no spouse to call, or anything like that.


2 comments

Wednesday 7 January 2009

Forward

By MP on Wednesday 7 January 2009, 22:51

Mum's death certificate arrived today and, you would not believe it, there are errors in it! Someone has very helpfully expanded the initials of the nursing home - incorrectly, twice. I think this is minor, but it leaves me shaking my head. Doesn't anybody every check their work?

The other silly thing is that the letter was delivered to my P O Box, just as I had requested. But at about Christmas the undertaker called me to say that the Registry had told her that they needed another address, as they would not deliver to a P O Box. I gave her the street address the Registry already had for me - as informant. I often think of Monty Python at these times.

The summer holiday doldrums are coming to an end in Australia. People are getting back to work and many of the usual summer entertainments are now over. It seemed a particularly long and enpty time for me this year. I never like it, but this year I felt particularly listless. I doubt that this has much to do with my parents, though I am ready to accept that it might. It is just that I do not miss them at all. Dad has been dead four months now and, as for mum, there was not much to miss, to be bluntly candid about it.

Anyway, being in possession of the second death certificate means I am now able to make forward progress on sorting out the estates. I took all paperwork files relating to my parents in to my office today, as it is much easier to do this kind of work there. One of the things I did in 2008 was throw out my computer printer at home. I'd had it for about 14 years and found that I no longer used it - the ones in the office do a much better job.

If things continue like this there will be little to add to this blog. I haven't stopped thinking about my parents but there is not much to add. They are gone. We are left to tidy up their affairs. We shall do so.

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