real warm memories

Can't believe where the month has gone - but then it's always like this at the start of term. I want to share Joyce Middlemist with you.

I have about 4 real memories of my maternal grandmother, and very few photographs of her, especially not with me, literally only two or three. She lived really close by, and I spent a lot of time there before I went to school, so it's sad I have so few memories, and sad too that there are so few photos - there are many more pictures of my paternal grandmother with me as a small child because she lived so far away and only [was] visited occasionally. So of her I have photos but probably less memories of the time before my maternal grandmother died. So of my maternal, local grandmother I have birthday cards in scrap books and a Collins English Dictionary she wrote a dedication in for me. She died when I was four. One of my few memories is most likely from after she died, emptying the house. Shortly after my grandmother died, Joyce was widowed. Similarly, looking back, I suppose the two are why we then spent loads of time there, and I was big enough to remember much more of the summers playing in the garden at Joyce's house. Joyce Middlemist was an amazing woman, known around the valley, anyone's ideal fairy godmother. I recognised many of the events told in the eulogy at her funeral service last month, but I learnt something new, and it was a lovely thing I want to share.

From being really small, the old house was HUGE. It isn't, and I'd love to knock on the door and ask to have a look round now to surprise myself at the scale. It had a vast garden (for a four year old) and lovely views over the valley. It had a huge gracious living room which had poofs in. You were allowed to call them that then. I never bothered understanding that they were for adults feet, they were chairs for small people, and there was a green velour turtle which was my best friend. There was a staircase in the main hall (I suppose I remember this because of the spaciousness of the hall, the stairway and the fact it was a proper staircase instead of the stairs running straight up from the front door, boxed in, in the house we lived in. (Actually, strangely, I remember the stairs as one of the few things at my grandma's house too. An odd child, me.) And then behind the stairs was a large old fashioned kitchen, where Joyce was much at home. It was a lovely house, if a little sombre in my non-comprehending small mind.

Then she moved to round the corner from us. This house I spent many happy visiting hours, and though I suspect the old house is now littler than I thought it was, I remember there was a lot less of the new one and not everything she owned moved with her. Luckily for me, the turtle did. I confess to still sitting on it in to my 20s, rather than the sofa :) Joyce was one of those women with very definite ideas of hospitality. Within seconds of you arriving, the kettle was on and trays appeared, with pot, cups, plates and at least two kinds of cake/biscuits. More often than not (this being Yorkshire) there was the offer of Christmas cake and cheese.

She adored Adam, even when he was probably the grandson anyone would most like to renounce. Once I went and he was having a dinosaur phase - the living room was full of them. Later, I turned up to see a whole landscape taking up the front room, for some project he was working on at school. I can't remember if it was something he was supposed to be working on at school, or it was something that the teacher in her cooked up to try and engage him with whatever he was supposed to be working on, but it proved a landscape she and I could put a few leftover dinosaurs onto.

Joyce treasured a photo of me she called her bohemian princess. It was taken at our house in Hull, sitting on the stairs in our kitchen, holding the black cat that had moved itself in with us. In Sweden it's common to make Christmas 'cards' by having a greeting printed onto a reproduced photo, and I used that one in maybe 1996. She loved it, it took central wall space in the collection of photos which grew over the hallway wall. It's still a favourite photo of me - I don't have many I like. It's the way she introduced me to people. It's going to forever make me smile and think of her.

Joyce was involved with all sorts of faith groups across the valley. Sometimes I'd see her at sservices at St Andrews, sometimes she would be at Choppards Mission. When I did music GCSE she produced a poem that the Wooldale WI wanted making into a hymn for their something anniversary. It's a shame I don't have that in my music portfolio, but one day I'd love to hear them singing it and think oh - I recognise that!

We heard at her service about her resistance to getting old, of how on finding someone on her doorstep with a box of supplies for the elderly in the village, she dashed off to the pantry and came back with something to add to it. But age did catch up with her. One visit, some time before her first stroke, she put the kettle on when I arrived and then led me in to the living room. After a while, when we hadn't heard hte kettle whistle, I got up to go and see, and discovered that the kettle was on the side and the red *plastic* teapot was on the hotplate. Remedied just in time. She did hate getting old. She was happy to be back in her own house after her first stroke but hated being fussed over by the carers, or messed about by buses collecting her to take her to things. She didn't take kindly to God telling her to slow down. Sadly, I saw her less over the last couple of years as turning up as an unexpected surprise wasn't fair and she needed time to book in visitors. But I still received and sent cards and letters, and it makes me smile to pick up a handwritten letter. This I remember everytime I see little notes from my paternal grandmother, in her lovely writing. It's something we have lost in the world of email and text messages. It's worth a card or letter to a loved one now and again, especially a handwritten one.

But better than handwritten notes, I discovered at the funeral that she had left something else. I knew she had engaged in the sharing memories project mum had volunteered with, but apparently she had also taken part in a wider snapshot capture by the BBC, 'Telling Stories'. Often people who have lost someone spend hours replaying the answerphone messages from them. We talk a lot about audio at work; about audio feedback which is much richer than brief marginal comments, and audio intros/summaries/lectures. It's a powerfully connecting medium. It sure is. So from a day that I rejoiced in having been able to know this amazing woman to adulthood, which I did not with my grandmothers and thus having her was a double joy, and shared our common pain at her frustration of the last two debilitating years, and quietly commended her to the God in which she never doubted, I came home and heard her voice again. Amazing. I only wish there were more of it. The whole point of the sharing memories project was to keep experiences of past times for future generations, but it really made me realise/remember how lovely it is to have audio snapshots. Enjoy. And rest in peace, Joyce.