family stuffs
Jul. 4th, 2023 02:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
llywelaThere's some family stuff going on at the moment that I want to get off my chest, but it's likely to get quite long and complicated, so I'll put it behind a cut. Please feel free not to read. I'm just venting.
My Aunty Lesley died earlier this year on March 17, just a couple of weeks after her birthday; she was 77 years old. Her health had been failing for many years and she had been in hospital for several months, but it wasn't clear how just serious her final illness was until very near the end.
That was three and a half months ago. But I don't know if she has been buried yet, because since Lesley's death her only child, my cousin V, has thrown up a great big wall of silence and won't speak to anyone.
We don't know why. Because she isn't speaking to anyone. And everyone is just increasingly confused and hurt and upset, because while V has a history of being quite prickly and difficult, we were mostly on reasonable terms with her and everyone was on really good terms with Lesley, she was a wonderful, warm-hearted, outgoing person who loved her family dearly…but that family now doesn't know if we will ever get the chance to say a respectful goodbye to her, and we don't understand why.
The facts are these. Lesley died in the early hours of Friday 17 March. Her son-in-law A was with her; her daughter V was not (this will be a recurring theme when I come to relate the backstory). Neither one of them told anyone else in the family what had happened. That afternoon, a good 10-12 hours later, my Aunty Ruth phoned the hospital to speak to her sister, as she did every single day without fail (which V knew perfectly well) and was told by hospital staff that Lesley had died.
Now personally, I think it was rather cruel to let Ruth find out about her sister's death in that way when it could so easily have been avoided. But maybe that's just me.
Ruth then did what I've always thought you are supposed to do when someone dies: she notified the rest of the family, so that no one else would have the upsetting experience of phoning the hospital to speak to Lesley only to find that it was too late. I immediately sent a message of condolence to Lesley's daughter, V. She did not reply, but this was not surprising, she had just lost her mother, after all. The rest of us carried on for the next couple of days in the way that everyone always carries on after a death in the family: sending condolence cards, informing mutual friends, writing tributes, sharing anecdotes and photos, and so on. (For me and my branch of the family, we also had the added strain of my parents testing positive for Covid on the Saturday, which meant they were housebound for a while and I had to keep my 7yo niece with me for over a fortnight, juggling work and the school run.)
Then on the Sunday, V's husband A sent Aunty Ruth a really rude, ranting text saying that V was angry to learn that the news of her mother's death was spreading without her involvement, that she hadn't wanted anyone to know until she felt ready to tell them herself and now felt that this had been taken away from her, and that everyone was to direct all messages to him instead of V because she wasn't up to communicating with anyone.
This put Ruth in the uncomfortable position of having to pass this message on to the rest of the family. Ruth is 80, she has already buried both her husband and youngest son, and had now lost two siblings in under three months, so personally I feel that speaking to her in this way and making her the go-between was both unfair and unkind. But again, maybe that's just me.
So the wider family, now feeling worried, awkward and quite hurt, as well as upset about Lesley's death, settled down quietly to wait for news of the funeral arrangements.
And waited.
And waited.
Silence. No news. No one really knew what to do. V, obviously, is grieving badly, plus she is a prickly character at the best of times and takes offence very easily, and A tends to be belligerent, so everyone was reluctant to push too hard for news, but at the same time desperately wanted to know what was going on. And the weeks just kept passing by, with no communication from either of them whatsoever.
After a full month, I messaged A – a very polite message, extending sympathy again, asking how V was doing now, and then also asking if there was any news about the arrangements for Lesley. The message I got back was a very curt statement with no pleasantries whatsoever. "Lesley is with the coroner," no further explanation.
More confusion. Lesley died in hospital after a long illness and years of ill-health. As far as any of us were aware, her final hospitalisation was for an infection, the last in a very long line. There is, on the surface of it, absolutely no reason for the coroner to be involved at all – unless, perhaps, V requested it for some reason. But why? We simply don't know.
Since then, the wall of silence has continued. Several people, including me again, have very tentatively reached out to A, trying to find out what is going on. We have received no response.
The middle of June marked three months since Lesley's death. We are now a couple of weeks past that. As far as I can see, there are two possibilities at this point:
1) she is still lying in a morgue, for reasons I can't begin to guess – but if this was the case, why not have A put out a message to say that there was a hold up which would be explained in due course, even if they didn't want to go into detail just yet? Surely saying at least that much would be common courtesy?
2) she was already buried long ago, on the quiet, without a single member of her extended family present or even notified that it was happening, because that's what V wanted, everyone else be damned
Honestly, at this stage I think option 2 is by far the most likely. If I'm honest with myself, I suspected from the start that V would not bother to maintain contact with the family after her mother died, but I honestly believed she would have a proper family funeral for her first, because that's what Lesley would have wanted, and V loved her mother too much not to want the best possible send-off for her. It seems almost certain now that I was wrong about that…but I don't know for sure. I can't know for sure. And it hurts. I cannot see any good reason for leaving us all hanging like this, with no communication of any kind.
I tried reaching out to V again a week or so ago, in despair, since A is no longer replying to messages at all, despite being the designated conduit for information. I asked how she is, extended sympathy for her loss yet again, and asked her to please tell us whether or not her mother has been buried yet. Just a simple yes or no answer would suffice. Her only response was a rather snooty, "I will talk to people when I am ready but not before." Leaving me none the wiser.
And I'm just…is it me? Because I think she is behaving really badly, keeping the whole family in limbo, stewing in grief and confusion all this time, I think it is cruel and uncalled for. But maybe I'm the unreasonable one, expecting my cousin to keep the family her mother loved informed of the circumstances and arrangements around her death. I mean, they do say that there is no wrong way to grieve. Maybe it is perfectly reasonable for V to say, "I don't want to talk to anyone or see anyone or have to deal with anyone at all while I'm grieving, so I won't, no matter how much this hurts all the other people who are also grieving, many of whom I have relied on heavily for support in the past and who always gave it without question."
My gut says no, that grief is no excuse for deliberately and knowingly hurting other people, or for keeping it going as long as this. She wouldn't have to talk to anyone herself, she could have her husband send out a brief message explaining either that a) there would be a delay before the funeral, or b) they had decided to hold a small private funeral with no guests. It doesn't feel unreasonable to ask for that – it's just common decency, right? At least then we would know and could move on. But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm the unreasonable one. I've never lost a parent. Maybe losing a mother justifies this behaviour. Maybe it is entirely irrational of me to expect mature, respectful adult behaviour while grieving from a woman in her late 30s with not one but two first class honours degrees behind her, a professional doctor who is also a married homeowner with a young child. Maybe it is unreasonable of me to expect to be invited to the funeral of an aunt I have always had a close relationship with, an aunt who loved her family dearly. Maybe it is perfectly okay for someone to decide to have a private funeral for their mother without telling any of the extended family that this was happening, preventing anyone else from paying their respects and saying their goodbyes – or, alternatively, to not explain why the funeral has been delayed, for literal months. I mean, don't think so, but maybe I'm wrong.
Let's delve into the backstory a little.
The middle child from a family of seven, as a young woman through the late 1960s and 70s, Lesley led an active, carefree life. There are loads of photos of her off on exotic holidays abroad with groups of girl friends, which she could easily afford because she was working and still living at home with her parents at the time. Then, when she wanted to move out of home, she put her name down for a council flat – and was given one, just like that, as a single woman with a good job and no dependents (this is absolutely unimaginable to me, just one generation later) because it was the 1970s and Maggie Thatcher hadn't sold off all the council housing yet, so there was no shortage and no waiting list to speak of. Her health began to deteriorate when she was still quite young, however, and those carefree days ended when her daughter V was born in 1986.
Lesley was not quite 40 at the time. The father was never really involved; he was a Nigerian mature student who did a runner before his daughter was a year old and had no contact meaningful thereafter. To be honest, I think Lel was okay with this. She wasn't really looking for a partner. She wanted a child, so she had one, and raised her as a single parent in a two bedroom council flat. It wasn't a particularly easy life, but V wanted for nothing when she was growing up.
I was just turning nine when V was born, and I'll be honest: I don't really remember a time when Lesley's health wasn't poor, which means that V definitely doesn't either. For as long as I can remember, Lel was busy and active and caring and kind, but also regularly in and out of hospital with recurring bouts of bronchitis, pneumonia and various other respiratory ailments. V usually stayed with my Uncle Colin and his wife June when her mother was in hospital; their three oldest children were more or less grown and flying the nest by then, so they had room to spare, while their youngest (R), who came along very much as an afterthought, was fairly close in age to V, so the two girls spent a lot of time together as children. More on that later.
V was the youngest cousin in the family, until my parents adopted my little sister C a decade later (followed by a small clutch of new baby cousins from Dad's youngest brothers of all), so she was very much petted by all the family as a child. She was a sweet little thing, in those days. My grandfather, while he lived, absolutely doted on her – she was the only grandchild he ever really had any time for. Colin and June had her for regular sleepovers. Ruth and her husband Stan, who lived in Oxfordshire, made a huge effort to spend time with her and take her on outings, since she was the only child of a single parent with poor health and no car. My parents often took her with us for days out. All her older cousins petted her and played with her. She was quite seriously into athletics, for a while, and we would all cheer her on. Then as a teen she became more withdrawn, preferring to hang out in her room rather spend any time with the family, but there's nothing unusual about that. Normal teenage behaviour, you would think. I know she had a hard time in school, but lots of us can say that. Again, it's a fairly normal teenage experience. No alarm bells there.
At 18, V went off to university in London. My father drove her there, with all her stuff (and collected her again the next summer, and took her back the following September…my point being, she has always had a huge amount of support from the extended family). Looking back, I think that was when the rot started to set in. Lesley started relaying stories about how V had made friends with this or that fellow student, who was from much a wealthier background, and how they always treated her really badly – it was always other people mistreating poor innocent V, never as simple as 'she's had a row with her friend'. Then the stories became about how V wasn't coming home to visit over the holidays because she had been bullied in school and now hated the entire city of Cardiff as a result. As if the city as a whole was to blame for what is actually a fairly universal experience – sad to say, children get bullied in school all over the globe. And at the same time, there were still stories about wealthy university friends treating V badly…yet the city of London did not get the blame for this, despite being the location of these new bullying allegations. (The point of this anecdote being: V has a history of irrational thinking.)
At around this time, my cousin R got married and V was a bridesmaid. Shortly after the wedding, the two of them had an enormous row that I never fully understood the root cause of. Something to do with V's bridesmaid dress, I believe.
V then accused R of having bullied her horribly throughout their childhood. I don't know if that's true or not. I can well imagine that they would have clashed a fair bit as children. V was an only child and R the baby of her family, and both are strong personalities, used to getting their own way. Much of what V described as bullying sounded like nothing more than normal childish squabbles, but R was two or three years older and maybe should have known better, so I don't know. Then again, Lesley used to like telling the story of how whenever she looked after R as a child, R used to say that she didn't want to go home, that she wished Lel was her mum so she could stay forever (and it is of course completely normal for children to want to stay in a home they only ever visit as a special treat, rather than return to the humdrum routines of home). So probably there was also some jealousy at play from both R and V – certainly V has never liked to share her mother. I don't know.
What I do know is that the accusation caused a rift in the family, although possibly not as much as V was hoping for. Both sets of parents took their own daughter's side, naturally – and V, I feel, never really forgave Colin & June for supporting their own daughter over her. But while things were a little strained for a while, Lesley and Colin's sibling relationship remained strong; they did not allow the argument between their daughters to come between them. The rest of us remained fairly neutral, making sympathetic noises, so to speak, while trying to avoid taking sides at all.
V remained in London. After achieving a first class honours degree in journalism, she decided that she did not want to pursue that field after all and almost immediately enrolled on an expensive medical degree course (I hate to think what her student debt looks like). R later emigrated to New Zealand with her husband and children, and remains there to this day.
Twelve years ago, in the spring of 2011, Lesley's eternally fragile health took a nosedive when a cyst in her neck turned septic and she developed an extremely rare bacterial infection called nocardia. She went downhill really fast. At the end of March, she walked from her home to my parents' to celebrate my Mum's birthday – the cyst was already visible, but she was in good spirits. Two weeks later, she was on life support. Information online says that in patients with brain nocardia infection, mortality exceeds 80%; in other forms, mortality is 50%, even with appropriate therapy. Lesley had not just one but seven nocardia abscesses in her brain. Seven. It was a miracle she survived at all, but she never really recovered from the damage it caused.
I remember the day she went into intensive care quite vividly. It was a Friday, and after many anxious messages back and forth, I walked out of work and went to the hospital so that V wouldn't be on her own (her boyfriend A, now her husband, was still in London). Over the following days, I spent hours in that waiting room with V. I gave her cash to help tide her over with the extra expense of travelling back and forth. The whole family descended from all over the country – I was living in my parents' old house at the time, before it was sold, so had spare bedrooms and ended up having some of the uncles and aunts staying with me for over a week. We all took shifts sitting with her, just talking to her and massaging her arms and legs to keep the blood flowing. Just taking one day at a time.
When V returned to London, the rest of the (local) family continued to rally around. Through the long months Lesley was in hospital, I caught the bus to the hospital from work twice a week, every week. I sat reading to Lel and telling her stories while she was in the coma. I reassured her when she regained consciousness, confused and frightened by the situation she found herself in. I kept her company for long hours on the rehab ward. I comforted her when she was unable to attend funerals for first an uncle and then an aunt of her own, which she was utterly distraught over.
And it wasn't just me – the rest of the family all did likewise. We were all of us there for Lesley throughout those difficult months, and in the years that followed.
V, meanwhile, had returned to her life in London. She telephoned constantly, pestering the hospital staff for updates and news, berating them when she thought they weren't doing enough, nagging her mother to make better progress. Nothing anyone did was ever good enough. She only visited intermittently, though, and perhaps that is understandable, it is a long way to travel and an expensive journey to make, after all, even for the sake of her mother, plus she was a medical student and could not afford to take too much time away from her studies. The fact remains, though: the rest of the family were the ones who supported Lesley through her illness, hands on and physically present, while V remained at a distance, becoming increasingly paranoid and obsessive about her mother's health without ever spending any meaningful time with her.
Lesley was in hospital for six months on that occasion, and was never the same again, afterward. She went into intensive care in April and came home in October. Throughout those long months away from home, Uncle Colin visited her flat twice a day every day to look after her cat, while my parents cleaned and tidied the flat (which V always left looking like a pigsty on the rare occasions she visited, overflowing ashtrays everywhere and dirty dishes left in the sink to moulder) and kept Lel's beloved garden watered and well tended. In the run-up to her discharge from hospital, my Dad and Uncle Colin had long discussions with her occupational therapists, and then rearranged the furniture in the flat as directed, to ensure her safety and comfort when she came home with her severely reduced mobility. On the day she was released, I was there at the flat to meet her and welcome her home. I stayed with her for several days, sleeping on her horribly uncomfortable sofa, while she settled back into a completely new semi-housebound life, adjusting to her limitations, with carers coming in four times a day. When I arrived at the flat after work one day to find that she had vomited all over herself, I didn't flinch, I just knuckled down and cleaned her up, washed her nightie and scrubbed the floor, because all my life she would have done the same for anyone else who needed help, so how could I do any less for her now that she had become infirm?
Meanwhile, V was in London arranging power of attorney so that she would have full control over her mother's finances.
Over the years that followed, things continued in much the same way. Lesley was semi-housebound and could no longer get out and about visiting people the way she used to, so we all made a point of going to her instead. I visited every week, religiously, usually on a Tuesday. Made sure she had something to eat, did the washing up for her, kept her company and sat listening to her talk; we talked about anything and everything during my visits, and I treasure the memory of the long hours we spent together, the closeness we developed. Dad and Uncle Colin were also round at her flat all the time, doing odd jobs and keeping her company, and if she had a fall and hit the emergency button around her neck, one or other of them would be called out, as the closest relatives available, to pick her up and make sure she was safe. Sometimes my parents or Colin & June would take her out for the day in a wheelchair, since she could no longer walk unaided, for a change of scene.
V visited intermittently. She would usually drive down on a Saturday morning, spend her entire visit cooking, fill Lel's freezer with food that Lel did not like and would not eat but that V thought would be good for her, and then be off again by lunchtime Sunday. She was increasingly paranoid about her mother's health, but this did not extend to actually wanting to spend meaningful time with her. She would phone and text obsessively instead. Lel found it extremely wearying – I can't count the number of times I saw her refuse to take her own daughter's call when I was there visiting, because she knew she was only going to be nagged about something or other. She complained to me frequently about the things V liked to nag her about: "Why aren't you in bed yet?" (at 9pm) or "Why aren't you up yet?" (at 8am) or, the most frequent of all, "Why haven't you replied yet to the text I sent less than 2 minutes ago? Has something happened? Are you okay? Shall I call an ambulance? I'm calling an ambulance!"
She rarely did any of the things Lel actually needed her to do, like take her to the optician for new glasses. Over and over again, for months, Lel would complain to me about needing new glasses. I kept suggesting that one of her brothers could take her to the optician, but she always insisted that V would do it next time she was down – only she never did. V did, however, keep buying expensive new mobile phones for her mother, which Lesley could not learn how to use.
Lel's health remained poor. She had always been prone to respiratory complaints, and this only got worse after the nocardia, plus she had a number of nasty falls, so she was in and out of hospital repeatedly. Usually, when this happened, V did everything in her power to micro-manage her mother's care from a distance, rather than visit – and she always wanted someone to blame. I remember one time, my parents took Lel to see my sister C's Nativity play at the farm where she was on placement. It was an open air performance in December, but Lel wanted to go and was well wrapped up in her wheelchair, it was only an hour or so and she enjoyed herself thoroughly. About a week later, she came down with a cold, which she could have caught from anyone – she had carers attending her four times a day, regular visitors, the pharmacy delivery guy dropping off her meds on a weekly basis, and so on. V, however, decided that it was my parents' fault for taking her to the farm and ranted at them at length. She was appallingly rude, she would never have forgiven anyone who spoke to her own mother that way, but with V everyone always gives her the benefit of the doubt and makes excuses for her. "It's just because she's so worried about her mum," as if that makes it okay, and the rudeness gets glossed over rather than called out, because no one wants to poke the bear, so to speak.
That meltdown over the farm outing wasn't an unusual occurrence. V was always suspicious of anyone taking Lel out for the day, rather than grateful that Lesley was being given a nice experience – she would phone and text constantly, making it impossible for her mother to truly enjoy any outing, and always seemed to be on the lookout for some reason to complain that Lesley hadn't been properly looked after. She seemed to think that only she was capable of that…yet had no desire to actually do so.
Just a few weeks after the farm incident, however, V arranged for Lesley to travel up to London by train for a visit, rather than travel to Cardiff herself. That's right, her extremely frail semi-housebound mother who could barely walk, who V didn't think my parents should have taken out in public even for just an hour, had to travel 250 miles across the country by train, all on her own, because her fully able-bodied daughter didn't want the trouble of travelling herself.
Just so we're clear on the dynamic here.
I think I'm making it sound as if V has never had a good relationship with anyone. That isn't the case. As an adult she has become a prickly, paranoid, possessive person who is prone to massive overreactions and has had regular bouts of not speaking to various people over the years, but these rages always blow over. In between the blow-ups, she is as nice as pie, exchanging texts, sharing photos, and so on. Usual cousinly stuff. I've been up to London to meet her for days out together. She has made an effort to attend a bunch of family get-togethers over the years – she even came to see R and the family when they came over from New Zealand for a visit, which gave me hope that they'd both grown up and put their childhood squabbles behind them. So although she can be difficult and everyone always feels like they are walking on eggshells around her, she has always maintained a relationship with the extended family – at the time of Lesley's death, the only person V was definitely not speaking to was Uncle Colin…who died before his sister, back in December. Personally, I've always got on well with V. Even at times when she wasn't speaking to anyone else, she always remained on good terms with me. As recently as the weeks before Lesley's death, we were exchanging texts, me passing on family news, her commiserating over the death of my cat, and so on. When asked about her mum, though, she never really offered any detail to help anyone understand Lel's condition. "The usual," was all she would ever say. We usually got more information out of Lesley, until at last she couldn't.
V did not like visiting her mother in Cardiff and nagged her constantly to move to London, for years. Lesley said no every time. She was very clear on that point, and reiterated it to me many times. She did not want to move to London. Her entire life was in Cardiff. She was born here. Her family was here. Her friends were here. She knew her neighbourhood like the back of her hand. She was on close terms with just about everyone in her street. She wanted to stay. She tolerated occasional visits to London for V's sake but had no desire to live there – especially when V wanted her to move in to the flat with her and A, where she would have been alone all day every day while they were at work. No, that was not what she wanted at all. She was very definite about that.
Then the Covid-19 pandemic happened.
The family who live locally were in a routine with Lesley by that time, keeping her safe and well and entertained with regular visits. All of that had to stop. Lesley was under a shielding order and her health was just too fragile to take the risk even if it weren't now against the law, under lockdown regulations. She still had carers going in four times a day to see to her basic needs (plus a next-door neighbour willing to break restrictions to help out, if needed) but for the family, it meant we couldn't physically visit any more. Contact became telephone only, and Lel by this time was already struggling with the phone. She had another couple of nasty falls, spent some more time in hospital. It was all very worrying.
In the summer of 2020, V and her boyfriend A got married. Now, I had originally been invited to their wedding – not all of the family were, so I was honoured – but Covid put an end to that plan. In the end, they had no guests at the wedding at all, not even their parents – not even V's supposedly beloved mother, who they took out for a meal afterward. And that's fine, that was their choice to make, there's no reason they shouldn't have a small, intimate wedding, if that's what they wanted. I simply mention it as part of a pattern of behaviour.
Shortly after the wedding, V arranged to have Lesley moved from her council flat in Cardiff to a care home in London. Now Lesley, let us remember, had always been adamant that she did not want to move to London. Still, at the time everyone including Lesley herself thought it was probably for the best. She needed to be in care, she was increasingly unsafe living at home alone, even with carers going in four times a day, and it was completely understandable that V wanted her mother close, especially now that she was expecting her first child. So far so reasonable, even though it did make it almost impossible for the extended family to visit, given the combination of Covid restrictions and the distance involved.
Once Lesley was in London, however, it became harder and harder to keep in touch or to remain informed of her situation. I spoke to her regularly in the beginning, and she always grumbled that she couldn't see why she couldn't just go home to her flat. She had agreed to the move, but wasn't happy about it. Gradually, though, her already shaky ability to use her mobile phone began to decrease, more and more as time went by. The phone was nearly always switched off or out of battery or broken. When she did answer calls, she was increasingly confused and could not answer questions about her own health. And…you know how on TV when people want to get information about someone who is in hospital, they always lie and say they are 'family' and are immediately told whatever they want to know? In real life, that does not happen. Only the designated next of kin is entitled to ask for updates on a loved one's health, personal information cannot be shared even with family members, unless specifically authorised. The next of kin is then supposed to use their own discretion to pass on relevant information to the wider family. The trouble in this case has always been that V does not like to do that. Instead, when asked about her mother's health, she would sidestep the question, "Oh, you know, the usual." Never anything specific.
It was all very worrying. But hey, at least Lesley was close to her daughter and new baby grandson…right? The care home was just down the road from their flat. Once Covid restrictions were eased, it must have been lovely for them to spend quality time together, after so many years apart…right?
In fact, whenever asked if V had been in to visit, Lel nearly always said no.
I always gave V the benefit of the doubt over this. Lel's brain damage from the nocardia was in many ways similar to the early stages of dementia. Perhaps V was visiting regularly and she simply couldn't remember, I would say. But when the nurses caring for her were asked, if they mentioned any visitor at all, it was usually A rather than V.
By the time Lesley went into hospital for the last time in December, it was already extremely difficult to get through to her by phone. Aunty Ruth, though, was incredibly dedicated. She phoned every single day, right to the end. She would keep trying for hours before giving up. Once Lesley was in hospital, Ruth would phone the ward and have them take the phone to Lesley so that they could talk – that was actually easier than trying to get through on the increasingly defunct mobile phone. Even on days when Lel was so poorly she couldn't really respond, Ruth still had the nurses hold the phone to her ear, so that she could hear her sister's voice and know that she wasn't alone, that she wasn't forgotten. The rest of us, by that point, were mostly relying on Ruth to relay information at this point, rather than clog up the ward phone with too many calls.
Ruth also struggled up from Oxford to London twice during Lesley's last illness to visit her in hospital, which I really wish I had managed to do myself. I'd hoped to get up there at Easter, if only she had lasted that long.
The years since Covid haven't been easy for anyone. Ruth lost her youngest son to cancer in 2021; most of the family watched his funeral over Zoom because of Covid restrictions. Then we lost Uncle Colin just last Christmas; he died of an aortic aneurism in New Zealand while visiting his daughter R and was cremated without ceremony for transport home, with a memorial service arranged for him later, which was absolutely packed with family and friends, it was a really beautiful celebration of his life.
V, I might add, was kept fully informed at every stage of these proceedings. Even though she and Colin didn't get on, she was still kept informed, because as his niece she had a right to know. She did not attend his memorial service, either in person or by Zoom, but she was given the opportunity to be there. Not attending was her choice.
And that brings us back to the present. To Lesley's death and V's wall of silence ever since.
I don't know what to think. It is still possible that Lesley's funeral has not happened yet, either because V can't face it or because she has raised some kind of concern over her mother's care which is under investigation. But if this is the case, there is no reason not to keep the family informed – of the bare fact of a delay, even if not the detail. I mean, we deserve that much, surely? There simply isn't any good reason not to say anything at all. I'm not wrong about that, am I?
Increasingly, though, it seems much more likely that the funeral has already taken place, that V decided to have her mother buried very quietly and privately, without any of the family there, and now doesn't want to admit it, or can't bring herself to admit it, or simply doesn't care to admit it, because she doesn't want to talk to anyone and that's that.
I don't want this to be true but it seems by far the most likely scenario. And on the one hand, I appreciate that V was perfectly within her rights to have a small, private funeral for her mother, if that's what she really wanted to do, even though I am certain it is not what Lesley would have wanted – she would be heartbroken at the thought of it, in fact. But what really gets me is that she didn't have the decency to tell anyone that's what she was doing – or to have A tell anyone that's what she was doing. That she has just left everyone hanging like this, for months, unable to say goodbye and move on.
And I just can't wrap my head around the reasons why. Because V couldn't face seeing or having to talk to anyone at all so simply decided that she wouldn't? Because she was angry that she didn't get to break the news of her mother's death – or that she didn't get to keep that news to herself, as she apparently wanted? (I have strong feelings about that possibility, since she made no attempt to actually control the flow of information when she had the chance, right there at the start, she apparently just expected everyone to magically know what she wanted without being told.) Because she wanted to keep her mother all to herself in death as she never could in life? Because she has a grudge against one or two members of the family and decided to punish everyone else along with them, including all the people who have done so much over the years both for her and for Lesley? Because having had an 'intimate' wedding with no guests, she thought it would be nice to do the same for her mother's funeral? (Never mind that funerals with no guests regularly make news headlines because everyone thinks they are so sad, and it is unbearable to think of Lesley of all people being given such a mean and paltry send off, when it was standing room only at her brother's memorial just a few weeks earlier and she would have had the same, if only the people who knew her had been given the chance.)
Maybe there is a good explanation. I just can't imagine what that might be. I simply can't come up with any good reason not to at least keep us informed. Every possible explanation I can think of is rooted either in indifference, petty pique, or outright malice, and I'm not sure which would be worst to have confirmed.
I know that V will be devastated to have lost her mother. I know that. I know that grief can make people behave irrationally. But most people who are grieving for loved ones still manage to see beyond their own pain, still manage to recognise that others are grieving too, still manage to communicate funeral arrangements appropriately to ensure that their loved ones are given the send off they deserve and that all the people who knew them have the chance to pay their respects and say goodbye.
So. I don't know. You tell me. Is it reasonable for a woman grieving for her mother to cut her entire family off entirely, to the point of not even telling them whether or not the funeral has taken place? Maybe I am the unreasonable one for expecting to attend the funeral of an aunt I had a close relationship with – for expecting to know whether or not that funeral has even taken place, more than three months later. Maybe it is perfectly understandable for V to behave the way she is, and to let the silence drag on for this long, and I should just make allowances for her, the way that everyone has been making allowances for her all her life.
I'll let anyone who has read this far be the judge of that, because I just don't know any more. All I really know is that it hurts.
My Aunty Lesley died earlier this year on March 17, just a couple of weeks after her birthday; she was 77 years old. Her health had been failing for many years and she had been in hospital for several months, but it wasn't clear how just serious her final illness was until very near the end.
That was three and a half months ago. But I don't know if she has been buried yet, because since Lesley's death her only child, my cousin V, has thrown up a great big wall of silence and won't speak to anyone.
We don't know why. Because she isn't speaking to anyone. And everyone is just increasingly confused and hurt and upset, because while V has a history of being quite prickly and difficult, we were mostly on reasonable terms with her and everyone was on really good terms with Lesley, she was a wonderful, warm-hearted, outgoing person who loved her family dearly…but that family now doesn't know if we will ever get the chance to say a respectful goodbye to her, and we don't understand why.
The facts are these. Lesley died in the early hours of Friday 17 March. Her son-in-law A was with her; her daughter V was not (this will be a recurring theme when I come to relate the backstory). Neither one of them told anyone else in the family what had happened. That afternoon, a good 10-12 hours later, my Aunty Ruth phoned the hospital to speak to her sister, as she did every single day without fail (which V knew perfectly well) and was told by hospital staff that Lesley had died.
Now personally, I think it was rather cruel to let Ruth find out about her sister's death in that way when it could so easily have been avoided. But maybe that's just me.
Ruth then did what I've always thought you are supposed to do when someone dies: she notified the rest of the family, so that no one else would have the upsetting experience of phoning the hospital to speak to Lesley only to find that it was too late. I immediately sent a message of condolence to Lesley's daughter, V. She did not reply, but this was not surprising, she had just lost her mother, after all. The rest of us carried on for the next couple of days in the way that everyone always carries on after a death in the family: sending condolence cards, informing mutual friends, writing tributes, sharing anecdotes and photos, and so on. (For me and my branch of the family, we also had the added strain of my parents testing positive for Covid on the Saturday, which meant they were housebound for a while and I had to keep my 7yo niece with me for over a fortnight, juggling work and the school run.)
Then on the Sunday, V's husband A sent Aunty Ruth a really rude, ranting text saying that V was angry to learn that the news of her mother's death was spreading without her involvement, that she hadn't wanted anyone to know until she felt ready to tell them herself and now felt that this had been taken away from her, and that everyone was to direct all messages to him instead of V because she wasn't up to communicating with anyone.
This put Ruth in the uncomfortable position of having to pass this message on to the rest of the family. Ruth is 80, she has already buried both her husband and youngest son, and had now lost two siblings in under three months, so personally I feel that speaking to her in this way and making her the go-between was both unfair and unkind. But again, maybe that's just me.
So the wider family, now feeling worried, awkward and quite hurt, as well as upset about Lesley's death, settled down quietly to wait for news of the funeral arrangements.
And waited.
And waited.
Silence. No news. No one really knew what to do. V, obviously, is grieving badly, plus she is a prickly character at the best of times and takes offence very easily, and A tends to be belligerent, so everyone was reluctant to push too hard for news, but at the same time desperately wanted to know what was going on. And the weeks just kept passing by, with no communication from either of them whatsoever.
After a full month, I messaged A – a very polite message, extending sympathy again, asking how V was doing now, and then also asking if there was any news about the arrangements for Lesley. The message I got back was a very curt statement with no pleasantries whatsoever. "Lesley is with the coroner," no further explanation.
More confusion. Lesley died in hospital after a long illness and years of ill-health. As far as any of us were aware, her final hospitalisation was for an infection, the last in a very long line. There is, on the surface of it, absolutely no reason for the coroner to be involved at all – unless, perhaps, V requested it for some reason. But why? We simply don't know.
Since then, the wall of silence has continued. Several people, including me again, have very tentatively reached out to A, trying to find out what is going on. We have received no response.
The middle of June marked three months since Lesley's death. We are now a couple of weeks past that. As far as I can see, there are two possibilities at this point:
1) she is still lying in a morgue, for reasons I can't begin to guess – but if this was the case, why not have A put out a message to say that there was a hold up which would be explained in due course, even if they didn't want to go into detail just yet? Surely saying at least that much would be common courtesy?
2) she was already buried long ago, on the quiet, without a single member of her extended family present or even notified that it was happening, because that's what V wanted, everyone else be damned
Honestly, at this stage I think option 2 is by far the most likely. If I'm honest with myself, I suspected from the start that V would not bother to maintain contact with the family after her mother died, but I honestly believed she would have a proper family funeral for her first, because that's what Lesley would have wanted, and V loved her mother too much not to want the best possible send-off for her. It seems almost certain now that I was wrong about that…but I don't know for sure. I can't know for sure. And it hurts. I cannot see any good reason for leaving us all hanging like this, with no communication of any kind.
I tried reaching out to V again a week or so ago, in despair, since A is no longer replying to messages at all, despite being the designated conduit for information. I asked how she is, extended sympathy for her loss yet again, and asked her to please tell us whether or not her mother has been buried yet. Just a simple yes or no answer would suffice. Her only response was a rather snooty, "I will talk to people when I am ready but not before." Leaving me none the wiser.
And I'm just…is it me? Because I think she is behaving really badly, keeping the whole family in limbo, stewing in grief and confusion all this time, I think it is cruel and uncalled for. But maybe I'm the unreasonable one, expecting my cousin to keep the family her mother loved informed of the circumstances and arrangements around her death. I mean, they do say that there is no wrong way to grieve. Maybe it is perfectly reasonable for V to say, "I don't want to talk to anyone or see anyone or have to deal with anyone at all while I'm grieving, so I won't, no matter how much this hurts all the other people who are also grieving, many of whom I have relied on heavily for support in the past and who always gave it without question."
My gut says no, that grief is no excuse for deliberately and knowingly hurting other people, or for keeping it going as long as this. She wouldn't have to talk to anyone herself, she could have her husband send out a brief message explaining either that a) there would be a delay before the funeral, or b) they had decided to hold a small private funeral with no guests. It doesn't feel unreasonable to ask for that – it's just common decency, right? At least then we would know and could move on. But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm the unreasonable one. I've never lost a parent. Maybe losing a mother justifies this behaviour. Maybe it is entirely irrational of me to expect mature, respectful adult behaviour while grieving from a woman in her late 30s with not one but two first class honours degrees behind her, a professional doctor who is also a married homeowner with a young child. Maybe it is unreasonable of me to expect to be invited to the funeral of an aunt I have always had a close relationship with, an aunt who loved her family dearly. Maybe it is perfectly okay for someone to decide to have a private funeral for their mother without telling any of the extended family that this was happening, preventing anyone else from paying their respects and saying their goodbyes – or, alternatively, to not explain why the funeral has been delayed, for literal months. I mean, don't think so, but maybe I'm wrong.
Let's delve into the backstory a little.
The middle child from a family of seven, as a young woman through the late 1960s and 70s, Lesley led an active, carefree life. There are loads of photos of her off on exotic holidays abroad with groups of girl friends, which she could easily afford because she was working and still living at home with her parents at the time. Then, when she wanted to move out of home, she put her name down for a council flat – and was given one, just like that, as a single woman with a good job and no dependents (this is absolutely unimaginable to me, just one generation later) because it was the 1970s and Maggie Thatcher hadn't sold off all the council housing yet, so there was no shortage and no waiting list to speak of. Her health began to deteriorate when she was still quite young, however, and those carefree days ended when her daughter V was born in 1986.
Lesley was not quite 40 at the time. The father was never really involved; he was a Nigerian mature student who did a runner before his daughter was a year old and had no contact meaningful thereafter. To be honest, I think Lel was okay with this. She wasn't really looking for a partner. She wanted a child, so she had one, and raised her as a single parent in a two bedroom council flat. It wasn't a particularly easy life, but V wanted for nothing when she was growing up.
I was just turning nine when V was born, and I'll be honest: I don't really remember a time when Lesley's health wasn't poor, which means that V definitely doesn't either. For as long as I can remember, Lel was busy and active and caring and kind, but also regularly in and out of hospital with recurring bouts of bronchitis, pneumonia and various other respiratory ailments. V usually stayed with my Uncle Colin and his wife June when her mother was in hospital; their three oldest children were more or less grown and flying the nest by then, so they had room to spare, while their youngest (R), who came along very much as an afterthought, was fairly close in age to V, so the two girls spent a lot of time together as children. More on that later.
V was the youngest cousin in the family, until my parents adopted my little sister C a decade later (followed by a small clutch of new baby cousins from Dad's youngest brothers of all), so she was very much petted by all the family as a child. She was a sweet little thing, in those days. My grandfather, while he lived, absolutely doted on her – she was the only grandchild he ever really had any time for. Colin and June had her for regular sleepovers. Ruth and her husband Stan, who lived in Oxfordshire, made a huge effort to spend time with her and take her on outings, since she was the only child of a single parent with poor health and no car. My parents often took her with us for days out. All her older cousins petted her and played with her. She was quite seriously into athletics, for a while, and we would all cheer her on. Then as a teen she became more withdrawn, preferring to hang out in her room rather spend any time with the family, but there's nothing unusual about that. Normal teenage behaviour, you would think. I know she had a hard time in school, but lots of us can say that. Again, it's a fairly normal teenage experience. No alarm bells there.
At 18, V went off to university in London. My father drove her there, with all her stuff (and collected her again the next summer, and took her back the following September…my point being, she has always had a huge amount of support from the extended family). Looking back, I think that was when the rot started to set in. Lesley started relaying stories about how V had made friends with this or that fellow student, who was from much a wealthier background, and how they always treated her really badly – it was always other people mistreating poor innocent V, never as simple as 'she's had a row with her friend'. Then the stories became about how V wasn't coming home to visit over the holidays because she had been bullied in school and now hated the entire city of Cardiff as a result. As if the city as a whole was to blame for what is actually a fairly universal experience – sad to say, children get bullied in school all over the globe. And at the same time, there were still stories about wealthy university friends treating V badly…yet the city of London did not get the blame for this, despite being the location of these new bullying allegations. (The point of this anecdote being: V has a history of irrational thinking.)
At around this time, my cousin R got married and V was a bridesmaid. Shortly after the wedding, the two of them had an enormous row that I never fully understood the root cause of. Something to do with V's bridesmaid dress, I believe.
V then accused R of having bullied her horribly throughout their childhood. I don't know if that's true or not. I can well imagine that they would have clashed a fair bit as children. V was an only child and R the baby of her family, and both are strong personalities, used to getting their own way. Much of what V described as bullying sounded like nothing more than normal childish squabbles, but R was two or three years older and maybe should have known better, so I don't know. Then again, Lesley used to like telling the story of how whenever she looked after R as a child, R used to say that she didn't want to go home, that she wished Lel was her mum so she could stay forever (and it is of course completely normal for children to want to stay in a home they only ever visit as a special treat, rather than return to the humdrum routines of home). So probably there was also some jealousy at play from both R and V – certainly V has never liked to share her mother. I don't know.
What I do know is that the accusation caused a rift in the family, although possibly not as much as V was hoping for. Both sets of parents took their own daughter's side, naturally – and V, I feel, never really forgave Colin & June for supporting their own daughter over her. But while things were a little strained for a while, Lesley and Colin's sibling relationship remained strong; they did not allow the argument between their daughters to come between them. The rest of us remained fairly neutral, making sympathetic noises, so to speak, while trying to avoid taking sides at all.
V remained in London. After achieving a first class honours degree in journalism, she decided that she did not want to pursue that field after all and almost immediately enrolled on an expensive medical degree course (I hate to think what her student debt looks like). R later emigrated to New Zealand with her husband and children, and remains there to this day.
Twelve years ago, in the spring of 2011, Lesley's eternally fragile health took a nosedive when a cyst in her neck turned septic and she developed an extremely rare bacterial infection called nocardia. She went downhill really fast. At the end of March, she walked from her home to my parents' to celebrate my Mum's birthday – the cyst was already visible, but she was in good spirits. Two weeks later, she was on life support. Information online says that in patients with brain nocardia infection, mortality exceeds 80%; in other forms, mortality is 50%, even with appropriate therapy. Lesley had not just one but seven nocardia abscesses in her brain. Seven. It was a miracle she survived at all, but she never really recovered from the damage it caused.
I remember the day she went into intensive care quite vividly. It was a Friday, and after many anxious messages back and forth, I walked out of work and went to the hospital so that V wouldn't be on her own (her boyfriend A, now her husband, was still in London). Over the following days, I spent hours in that waiting room with V. I gave her cash to help tide her over with the extra expense of travelling back and forth. The whole family descended from all over the country – I was living in my parents' old house at the time, before it was sold, so had spare bedrooms and ended up having some of the uncles and aunts staying with me for over a week. We all took shifts sitting with her, just talking to her and massaging her arms and legs to keep the blood flowing. Just taking one day at a time.
When V returned to London, the rest of the (local) family continued to rally around. Through the long months Lesley was in hospital, I caught the bus to the hospital from work twice a week, every week. I sat reading to Lel and telling her stories while she was in the coma. I reassured her when she regained consciousness, confused and frightened by the situation she found herself in. I kept her company for long hours on the rehab ward. I comforted her when she was unable to attend funerals for first an uncle and then an aunt of her own, which she was utterly distraught over.
And it wasn't just me – the rest of the family all did likewise. We were all of us there for Lesley throughout those difficult months, and in the years that followed.
V, meanwhile, had returned to her life in London. She telephoned constantly, pestering the hospital staff for updates and news, berating them when she thought they weren't doing enough, nagging her mother to make better progress. Nothing anyone did was ever good enough. She only visited intermittently, though, and perhaps that is understandable, it is a long way to travel and an expensive journey to make, after all, even for the sake of her mother, plus she was a medical student and could not afford to take too much time away from her studies. The fact remains, though: the rest of the family were the ones who supported Lesley through her illness, hands on and physically present, while V remained at a distance, becoming increasingly paranoid and obsessive about her mother's health without ever spending any meaningful time with her.
Lesley was in hospital for six months on that occasion, and was never the same again, afterward. She went into intensive care in April and came home in October. Throughout those long months away from home, Uncle Colin visited her flat twice a day every day to look after her cat, while my parents cleaned and tidied the flat (which V always left looking like a pigsty on the rare occasions she visited, overflowing ashtrays everywhere and dirty dishes left in the sink to moulder) and kept Lel's beloved garden watered and well tended. In the run-up to her discharge from hospital, my Dad and Uncle Colin had long discussions with her occupational therapists, and then rearranged the furniture in the flat as directed, to ensure her safety and comfort when she came home with her severely reduced mobility. On the day she was released, I was there at the flat to meet her and welcome her home. I stayed with her for several days, sleeping on her horribly uncomfortable sofa, while she settled back into a completely new semi-housebound life, adjusting to her limitations, with carers coming in four times a day. When I arrived at the flat after work one day to find that she had vomited all over herself, I didn't flinch, I just knuckled down and cleaned her up, washed her nightie and scrubbed the floor, because all my life she would have done the same for anyone else who needed help, so how could I do any less for her now that she had become infirm?
Meanwhile, V was in London arranging power of attorney so that she would have full control over her mother's finances.
Over the years that followed, things continued in much the same way. Lesley was semi-housebound and could no longer get out and about visiting people the way she used to, so we all made a point of going to her instead. I visited every week, religiously, usually on a Tuesday. Made sure she had something to eat, did the washing up for her, kept her company and sat listening to her talk; we talked about anything and everything during my visits, and I treasure the memory of the long hours we spent together, the closeness we developed. Dad and Uncle Colin were also round at her flat all the time, doing odd jobs and keeping her company, and if she had a fall and hit the emergency button around her neck, one or other of them would be called out, as the closest relatives available, to pick her up and make sure she was safe. Sometimes my parents or Colin & June would take her out for the day in a wheelchair, since she could no longer walk unaided, for a change of scene.
V visited intermittently. She would usually drive down on a Saturday morning, spend her entire visit cooking, fill Lel's freezer with food that Lel did not like and would not eat but that V thought would be good for her, and then be off again by lunchtime Sunday. She was increasingly paranoid about her mother's health, but this did not extend to actually wanting to spend meaningful time with her. She would phone and text obsessively instead. Lel found it extremely wearying – I can't count the number of times I saw her refuse to take her own daughter's call when I was there visiting, because she knew she was only going to be nagged about something or other. She complained to me frequently about the things V liked to nag her about: "Why aren't you in bed yet?" (at 9pm) or "Why aren't you up yet?" (at 8am) or, the most frequent of all, "Why haven't you replied yet to the text I sent less than 2 minutes ago? Has something happened? Are you okay? Shall I call an ambulance? I'm calling an ambulance!"
She rarely did any of the things Lel actually needed her to do, like take her to the optician for new glasses. Over and over again, for months, Lel would complain to me about needing new glasses. I kept suggesting that one of her brothers could take her to the optician, but she always insisted that V would do it next time she was down – only she never did. V did, however, keep buying expensive new mobile phones for her mother, which Lesley could not learn how to use.
Lel's health remained poor. She had always been prone to respiratory complaints, and this only got worse after the nocardia, plus she had a number of nasty falls, so she was in and out of hospital repeatedly. Usually, when this happened, V did everything in her power to micro-manage her mother's care from a distance, rather than visit – and she always wanted someone to blame. I remember one time, my parents took Lel to see my sister C's Nativity play at the farm where she was on placement. It was an open air performance in December, but Lel wanted to go and was well wrapped up in her wheelchair, it was only an hour or so and she enjoyed herself thoroughly. About a week later, she came down with a cold, which she could have caught from anyone – she had carers attending her four times a day, regular visitors, the pharmacy delivery guy dropping off her meds on a weekly basis, and so on. V, however, decided that it was my parents' fault for taking her to the farm and ranted at them at length. She was appallingly rude, she would never have forgiven anyone who spoke to her own mother that way, but with V everyone always gives her the benefit of the doubt and makes excuses for her. "It's just because she's so worried about her mum," as if that makes it okay, and the rudeness gets glossed over rather than called out, because no one wants to poke the bear, so to speak.
That meltdown over the farm outing wasn't an unusual occurrence. V was always suspicious of anyone taking Lel out for the day, rather than grateful that Lesley was being given a nice experience – she would phone and text constantly, making it impossible for her mother to truly enjoy any outing, and always seemed to be on the lookout for some reason to complain that Lesley hadn't been properly looked after. She seemed to think that only she was capable of that…yet had no desire to actually do so.
Just a few weeks after the farm incident, however, V arranged for Lesley to travel up to London by train for a visit, rather than travel to Cardiff herself. That's right, her extremely frail semi-housebound mother who could barely walk, who V didn't think my parents should have taken out in public even for just an hour, had to travel 250 miles across the country by train, all on her own, because her fully able-bodied daughter didn't want the trouble of travelling herself.
Just so we're clear on the dynamic here.
I think I'm making it sound as if V has never had a good relationship with anyone. That isn't the case. As an adult she has become a prickly, paranoid, possessive person who is prone to massive overreactions and has had regular bouts of not speaking to various people over the years, but these rages always blow over. In between the blow-ups, she is as nice as pie, exchanging texts, sharing photos, and so on. Usual cousinly stuff. I've been up to London to meet her for days out together. She has made an effort to attend a bunch of family get-togethers over the years – she even came to see R and the family when they came over from New Zealand for a visit, which gave me hope that they'd both grown up and put their childhood squabbles behind them. So although she can be difficult and everyone always feels like they are walking on eggshells around her, she has always maintained a relationship with the extended family – at the time of Lesley's death, the only person V was definitely not speaking to was Uncle Colin…who died before his sister, back in December. Personally, I've always got on well with V. Even at times when she wasn't speaking to anyone else, she always remained on good terms with me. As recently as the weeks before Lesley's death, we were exchanging texts, me passing on family news, her commiserating over the death of my cat, and so on. When asked about her mum, though, she never really offered any detail to help anyone understand Lel's condition. "The usual," was all she would ever say. We usually got more information out of Lesley, until at last she couldn't.
V did not like visiting her mother in Cardiff and nagged her constantly to move to London, for years. Lesley said no every time. She was very clear on that point, and reiterated it to me many times. She did not want to move to London. Her entire life was in Cardiff. She was born here. Her family was here. Her friends were here. She knew her neighbourhood like the back of her hand. She was on close terms with just about everyone in her street. She wanted to stay. She tolerated occasional visits to London for V's sake but had no desire to live there – especially when V wanted her to move in to the flat with her and A, where she would have been alone all day every day while they were at work. No, that was not what she wanted at all. She was very definite about that.
Then the Covid-19 pandemic happened.
The family who live locally were in a routine with Lesley by that time, keeping her safe and well and entertained with regular visits. All of that had to stop. Lesley was under a shielding order and her health was just too fragile to take the risk even if it weren't now against the law, under lockdown regulations. She still had carers going in four times a day to see to her basic needs (plus a next-door neighbour willing to break restrictions to help out, if needed) but for the family, it meant we couldn't physically visit any more. Contact became telephone only, and Lel by this time was already struggling with the phone. She had another couple of nasty falls, spent some more time in hospital. It was all very worrying.
In the summer of 2020, V and her boyfriend A got married. Now, I had originally been invited to their wedding – not all of the family were, so I was honoured – but Covid put an end to that plan. In the end, they had no guests at the wedding at all, not even their parents – not even V's supposedly beloved mother, who they took out for a meal afterward. And that's fine, that was their choice to make, there's no reason they shouldn't have a small, intimate wedding, if that's what they wanted. I simply mention it as part of a pattern of behaviour.
Shortly after the wedding, V arranged to have Lesley moved from her council flat in Cardiff to a care home in London. Now Lesley, let us remember, had always been adamant that she did not want to move to London. Still, at the time everyone including Lesley herself thought it was probably for the best. She needed to be in care, she was increasingly unsafe living at home alone, even with carers going in four times a day, and it was completely understandable that V wanted her mother close, especially now that she was expecting her first child. So far so reasonable, even though it did make it almost impossible for the extended family to visit, given the combination of Covid restrictions and the distance involved.
Once Lesley was in London, however, it became harder and harder to keep in touch or to remain informed of her situation. I spoke to her regularly in the beginning, and she always grumbled that she couldn't see why she couldn't just go home to her flat. She had agreed to the move, but wasn't happy about it. Gradually, though, her already shaky ability to use her mobile phone began to decrease, more and more as time went by. The phone was nearly always switched off or out of battery or broken. When she did answer calls, she was increasingly confused and could not answer questions about her own health. And…you know how on TV when people want to get information about someone who is in hospital, they always lie and say they are 'family' and are immediately told whatever they want to know? In real life, that does not happen. Only the designated next of kin is entitled to ask for updates on a loved one's health, personal information cannot be shared even with family members, unless specifically authorised. The next of kin is then supposed to use their own discretion to pass on relevant information to the wider family. The trouble in this case has always been that V does not like to do that. Instead, when asked about her mother's health, she would sidestep the question, "Oh, you know, the usual." Never anything specific.
It was all very worrying. But hey, at least Lesley was close to her daughter and new baby grandson…right? The care home was just down the road from their flat. Once Covid restrictions were eased, it must have been lovely for them to spend quality time together, after so many years apart…right?
In fact, whenever asked if V had been in to visit, Lel nearly always said no.
I always gave V the benefit of the doubt over this. Lel's brain damage from the nocardia was in many ways similar to the early stages of dementia. Perhaps V was visiting regularly and she simply couldn't remember, I would say. But when the nurses caring for her were asked, if they mentioned any visitor at all, it was usually A rather than V.
By the time Lesley went into hospital for the last time in December, it was already extremely difficult to get through to her by phone. Aunty Ruth, though, was incredibly dedicated. She phoned every single day, right to the end. She would keep trying for hours before giving up. Once Lesley was in hospital, Ruth would phone the ward and have them take the phone to Lesley so that they could talk – that was actually easier than trying to get through on the increasingly defunct mobile phone. Even on days when Lel was so poorly she couldn't really respond, Ruth still had the nurses hold the phone to her ear, so that she could hear her sister's voice and know that she wasn't alone, that she wasn't forgotten. The rest of us, by that point, were mostly relying on Ruth to relay information at this point, rather than clog up the ward phone with too many calls.
Ruth also struggled up from Oxford to London twice during Lesley's last illness to visit her in hospital, which I really wish I had managed to do myself. I'd hoped to get up there at Easter, if only she had lasted that long.
The years since Covid haven't been easy for anyone. Ruth lost her youngest son to cancer in 2021; most of the family watched his funeral over Zoom because of Covid restrictions. Then we lost Uncle Colin just last Christmas; he died of an aortic aneurism in New Zealand while visiting his daughter R and was cremated without ceremony for transport home, with a memorial service arranged for him later, which was absolutely packed with family and friends, it was a really beautiful celebration of his life.
V, I might add, was kept fully informed at every stage of these proceedings. Even though she and Colin didn't get on, she was still kept informed, because as his niece she had a right to know. She did not attend his memorial service, either in person or by Zoom, but she was given the opportunity to be there. Not attending was her choice.
And that brings us back to the present. To Lesley's death and V's wall of silence ever since.
I don't know what to think. It is still possible that Lesley's funeral has not happened yet, either because V can't face it or because she has raised some kind of concern over her mother's care which is under investigation. But if this is the case, there is no reason not to keep the family informed – of the bare fact of a delay, even if not the detail. I mean, we deserve that much, surely? There simply isn't any good reason not to say anything at all. I'm not wrong about that, am I?
Increasingly, though, it seems much more likely that the funeral has already taken place, that V decided to have her mother buried very quietly and privately, without any of the family there, and now doesn't want to admit it, or can't bring herself to admit it, or simply doesn't care to admit it, because she doesn't want to talk to anyone and that's that.
I don't want this to be true but it seems by far the most likely scenario. And on the one hand, I appreciate that V was perfectly within her rights to have a small, private funeral for her mother, if that's what she really wanted to do, even though I am certain it is not what Lesley would have wanted – she would be heartbroken at the thought of it, in fact. But what really gets me is that she didn't have the decency to tell anyone that's what she was doing – or to have A tell anyone that's what she was doing. That she has just left everyone hanging like this, for months, unable to say goodbye and move on.
And I just can't wrap my head around the reasons why. Because V couldn't face seeing or having to talk to anyone at all so simply decided that she wouldn't? Because she was angry that she didn't get to break the news of her mother's death – or that she didn't get to keep that news to herself, as she apparently wanted? (I have strong feelings about that possibility, since she made no attempt to actually control the flow of information when she had the chance, right there at the start, she apparently just expected everyone to magically know what she wanted without being told.) Because she wanted to keep her mother all to herself in death as she never could in life? Because she has a grudge against one or two members of the family and decided to punish everyone else along with them, including all the people who have done so much over the years both for her and for Lesley? Because having had an 'intimate' wedding with no guests, she thought it would be nice to do the same for her mother's funeral? (Never mind that funerals with no guests regularly make news headlines because everyone thinks they are so sad, and it is unbearable to think of Lesley of all people being given such a mean and paltry send off, when it was standing room only at her brother's memorial just a few weeks earlier and she would have had the same, if only the people who knew her had been given the chance.)
Maybe there is a good explanation. I just can't imagine what that might be. I simply can't come up with any good reason not to at least keep us informed. Every possible explanation I can think of is rooted either in indifference, petty pique, or outright malice, and I'm not sure which would be worst to have confirmed.
I know that V will be devastated to have lost her mother. I know that. I know that grief can make people behave irrationally. But most people who are grieving for loved ones still manage to see beyond their own pain, still manage to recognise that others are grieving too, still manage to communicate funeral arrangements appropriately to ensure that their loved ones are given the send off they deserve and that all the people who knew them have the chance to pay their respects and say goodbye.
So. I don't know. You tell me. Is it reasonable for a woman grieving for her mother to cut her entire family off entirely, to the point of not even telling them whether or not the funeral has taken place? Maybe I am the unreasonable one for expecting to attend the funeral of an aunt I had a close relationship with – for expecting to know whether or not that funeral has even taken place, more than three months later. Maybe it is perfectly understandable for V to behave the way she is, and to let the silence drag on for this long, and I should just make allowances for her, the way that everyone has been making allowances for her all her life.
I'll let anyone who has read this far be the judge of that, because I just don't know any more. All I really know is that it hurts.
