**Diary Entry 3rd June, 1962**
It was Friday noon when Granny Mabel decided shed had enough. After finishing a bowl of porridge and washing it down with milk, she wiped her mouth with her apron and stared through the kitchen window, her voice flat and matter-of-fact.
“Joan, love, Ill be passing come Sunday, just before matins.”
Her daughter Joan froze mid-step, saucepan in hand, then spun round and sank onto a stool, clutching a tea towel.
“Whats got into you?”
“Times up, thats all. Lived my share. Help me wash, fetch the clean things from the trunkyou know, the burial clothes. Well sort the rest laterwholl dig the grave, wholl see to the funeral. Theres time.”
“Should we tell the others? Let them come say goodbye?”
“Aye, do. Tell em Ill speak with each.”
“Want to set things straight at the end? Thats goodlet em know.”
The old woman nodded and shuffled off to bed, leaning on Joans arm.
She was tiny, withered like a baked apple, her face a map of wrinkles, eyes still sharp as pins. Her thin grey hair, scraped into a bun and tucked under a white cotton scarf, peeked from beneath her ever-present apron. Eighty-nine years shed seen. And now thisready to die.
“Mum, Ill pop to the post office, send telegrams. Youll be alright?”
“Aye, off you go.”
Alone, Granny Mabel let her mind wander. Back to her youth, sitting by the river with Stanley, chewing a blade of grass, him smiling soft at her. Their wedding daypetite and neat in a cream satin dress, dancing lively to the squeeze-box while Stanleys mother muttered,
“What goods a scrap like her in a house? Too smalldoubt shell even bear.”
Wrong, she was. Mabel worked like a horsefields, garden, never lagged. When they built the house, she was Stanleys right hand. A year in, their cottage still fresh, she bore Joan. Joan was four when war came, and Stanley marched off with the first lot.
Remembering that parting, Mabel shuddered, wiping her eyes with her apron.
“My darling lad how I wept for thee. God keep thee, rest thee soft. Ill see thee soonjust wait a bit.”
Joan returned, the village nurse in tow.
“Now then, Granny Mabel, feeling poorly?”
“Cant complain.”
The nurse checked herpulse, blood pressure, even the thermometer. All normal. Pulling Joan aside, he murmured,
“Lifes worn thin. No science to it, but the old ones know. Brace yourself, love. At her age”
Saturday, Joan bathed her mother, dressed her fresh, and Mabel lay staring at the ceiling, as if practising.
By afternoon, the children arrived.
John, stout and balding, barged in with bags of treats. William and Michael, dark-haired twins with hawk noses, rolled up in their motor from Leeds, eyeing Joanhow was she holding up?
Annie, plump and cheerful, came by coach from the next county, where she lived with her brood. Last was Rosemary, a willowy redheadheadmistress up in Yorkwhod taken the train then a cab.
Sniffling into handkerchiefs, they filed in, kissing Mabels papery hands.
“Mum, whats this? Youve years yetyoure strong as oak.”
“Was. No more,” she said, lips pursed. “Rest now. Well talk tomorrowIll not go afore matins.”
The children hovered, uneasy but relieved Joan was here, steady as ever.
Old habits took overWilliam and Michael chopped wood, John hauled water from the pump, Annie fed the chickens, Joan and Rosemary cooked.
At supper, they whispered round the table while Mabel, eyes on the ceiling, watched her life unfurl.
War had been cruelcold, hunger, scraping frozen spuds from fields, frying them with the last drips of linseed oil. Shed planted eyes, not tubers, sensing the long haul. Nettles, sorrel, anything green went in the pot. When Stanleys death notice came, she cut his clothes down for the children.
“Aye, wellsuch is life,” she sighed, cutting the memory short.
Come autumn, shed trade potatoes at the railheadtinned meat, a lump of sugar, anything for the bairns hollow eyes. Later, she swapped Stanleys best suit, her good dress, even silver earrings for a nanny goat. Milk at lastthe children bloomed.
Oh, the trialsschool scrapes, chickenpox (the lot of them dappled green like frogs), broken bones, hidden fags behind the barn. Shed tricked the lads into the washhouse, forced them to smoke rank tobacco till they retched. Never caught em at it again.
No man after Stanleysuitors came, but the children wailed, “Were grand as we are!” How could she say she ached to lean on someone?
Theyd flown the nestall but Joan.
“Such is life,” she whispered.
Dawn broke. Propped on pillows, Mabel gathered them.
“Forgive me, loves, if Ive failed you. Stay kind to each other. Ill be gone soon.”
They protested, but she hushed them.
“Gods will, not mine.”
Then, softly, she began.
“Winter 40, Joan and I sat by the fire. Mum, she says, theres knocking. I openeda babe on the step, blue with cold. Fed him bread pap, warm water. No mother ever came. We named him John.”
Silence.
“42bitter cold. At the station, a lass of five, froze-cheeked. Waited hours. No one came. Turned out she was Annie.”
Rosemary gasped.
“43lorry full of bairns, bombs had hit their convoy. Two little lads, clinging. Took emWilliam and Michael.”
A tear slid down Joans cheek.
“Rosemary her mam drank herself to death. I took the bairn from the pub one night. Poor lamb took years to trust.”
The room hummed with silence.
“Off now. Im tired.”
They stumbled out, reeling. In the kitchen, memories surfacedodd hints, long buried. Yet the house still felt like home.
Joan tiptoed in later to tuck the blanket.
Mabel lay, eyes wide, a smile on her lips.
Gone.
**Lesson:** Familys not just bloodits the love you choose to keep.
