I was beginning to consider the possibility of getting up and dressed yesterday morning when Tabitha sent a message to say that someone had dropped a small snow storm onto Cambridge. I gave up the idea of wearing my best black trousers and decided to wear my winter walking trousers – which are also black, but which are fleecy lined and, conveniently, have a pocket on the leg large enough to hold my iPhone and my Japanese flash cards.
In the end, I wore my winter walking trousers, a white shirt, with a floatie tie-died purple shirt over the top, and a warm, woolly cardigan, but taking my black jacket for when we actually got there. The Builder wore his funeral suit (he wears the jacket sometimes, but the suits as a whole only for funerals). The trousers seem to have shrunk while they’re been hanging in the wardrobe since May 2008!
And off we set. Nice and early, allowing for hold ups on the A1, the A14 and in snowy Cambridge.
There were no hold-ups. And no snow in Girton.
But it was just as well that we allowed extra time, for Penny sent me a message after we had been gone for about 20 minutes suggesting that we should meet at the house for a cup of tea before the service and not at the crematorium as had originally been planned!
We got there to find Joan, Penny, Steve, Tim, Jeremy and Jill all supping tea or coffee and ready to roll. Andy (who I had not seen since 1965!!) and Nic his partner were on their way but held up in traffic. Jane, who was also supposed to be attending to represent Margaret’s side of the family, had, unfortunately, been taken poorly and was unable to come. And it was too short notice for Paul or Ruth to substitute for her.
Andy and Nic arrived shortly before Peter, who came in a beautiful coffin with a truly beautiful wreath, arranged by Jill, atop. Then, a little while later, he set off for the crematorium, followed by his wife and four children in a funeral car, then followed by Steve, Jill and Nic, and The Builder and me in our cars.
We were met by the vicar of Girton whose name is Christine something. And then there followed a short and simple service, with music and readings and prayers and a poem – but no eulogy or hymns. These will follow at a memorial service to which everyone has been invited at the end of February. It was all very lovely, all the same.
And then we repaired to the Travellers’ Rest on the Huntingdon Road, not all that far from the house. It’s one of the pubs that we most frequently went to if lunching with Peter and Joan (the other is the Old Crown, virtually opposite their house – but I think it’s closed this week for some reason). Jeremy made a speech. We all toasted Peter. Then we sat down for a lunch, bought by Peter, at a little after 1pm.
Excellent, thought I. A nice lunch, a good chat – and there will still be plenty of time for me to get to my Japanese class in Sheffield at 7:15.
Three courses, a gin and tonic, two glasses of wine and three hours later we left the pub and returned to the house for a Nice Cup of Tea. No chance of getting to Japanese then!!
But it was a good afternoon.
Nice to have chance to chat to everyone, but especially to Andy and to Nic (who I had not met before – I’m not even sure I had fully registered that she existed even!). Andy has been working with the forestry people in Shropshire but has more recently been doing some landscape gardening (although that seems to have dried up latterly) and has been writing things about forestry matters and flora and fauna and so on. Nic works as a environmental planner for the Shropshire council. And Andy has an interest in ham-making and bacon-curing and several other things that I also have an interest in.
I have been interested, over the past fortnight to find that the world has seemed really rather strange without Peter in it. And I haven’t been quite sure why. It can’t just have been that Peter has always been there. Jack and Raymond also had both always been there and the world didn’t seem strange when they left. It was sad, of course, but not strange. Then I thought. Jack had more or less slipped slowly and gently away over several years of increasing ill health. By the time he actually left, the Jack-space (if you see what I mean) had almost entirely closed. Raymond’s space had been very fragile for a long time when he died – and he had made it very plain that he was more than ready to vacate it. He had pretty much closed his space long before he died. But Peter's space had been clear and strong and very definitely occupied pretty much up until the last minute. He got up and very suddenly left a very vibrant space. For a time, the space has still been there, but no one was in it.
He described the last year or so as a gentle wander downhill, although I don’t think anyone realised quite how close to the bottom of the hill he had got. Not a bad way to describe it, I think. I hope that we all have a nice gentle wander down the hill, when the time comes. And that arriving in the valley is a surprise
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