R.I.P. Eric Thorpe

Last Sunday my father in law died peacefully in our local hospital, aged ninety-five, from kidney failure.  Four days earlier he had slipped into deep unconsciousness and we knew he could no longer be treated.  From then on Ian and I, hugely supported by our son and daughter and their partners, who live reasonably locally, kept him company night and day. Our other adult children, who live far away, provided their own support by phone and text.  How does anyone manage these things without the loving support and care of adult children, I wonder?  When my mother died last year I felt it too: we were not alone, the next generation were with us, taking their share, looking after us in their turn.  It is a good feeling. 

I felt as I do now about blogging when my mother died. Partly I did not want to blog.  There are some things which need privacy.  But I also knew that if I did not mention something so important, if I blogged about gardens or lemon cake or walking on beaches, I would in a sort of way be lying.  This blog is not for baring my soul, for public self analysis or therapy.  Often it is for the things in life that give me pleasure: cooking and eating and books and gardens and making things and the very beautiful place in which I am lucky enough to live.  It marks out the year, follows the seasons, shares the celebrations that punctuate the year with family and friends.  Every now and then I have a bit of a rant about things I hate: bullying, unkindness, consumerism, our society's obsession with looks and celebrity.  It is a blog about my life and if I did not tell you about my father in law's death I would start to feel that the blog was a bit of a pretence, in fact I might just have to stop blogging altogether.

So while this blog is not a place to be sad in I would like to tell you a bit about my father in law.

Born in 1918 in the industrial North West of England, Eric was a Rochdale man to the soles of his feet.  He was the youngest of seven children and I suspect was indulged a little by the whole family.  He certainly grew taller and stronger than his elder brothers which they always claimed was because he got more food as a child.  His family were truly poor in that way we have all forgotten about now. There was no question at all that he could stay on at school beyond the age of 14.  All the children had to work.  Eric loved school and didn't want to leave.  He didn't necessarily have an academic sort of intelligence, although he was bright enough,  but he had a natural quickness of mind, an ability to make people laugh and a way of handling people which made him popular and well loved throughout his life.  He was easy to get on with, always ready to give people a hand, a lover of gambling who nevertheless never bet more than he could afford (which wasn't much!), a devoted father, a man totally incapable of doing anything other than looking on the bright side.  He was very profoundly of his time, growing up in the twenties and thirties and raising his family through the fifties, and of his place, a Lancashire milltown.

The only time he spent away from Rochdale was when he was posted to Orkney for the duration of the Second World War.  Somehow being sent to Orkney was very typical of Eric.  Yes, there were dangers undoubtedly and, despite being a soldier not a sailor, he served on the boats which supplied the many bases on the islands.  He was lucky that he did not suffer from seasickness.   But it was a dangerous place.   There were deaths in Orkney, in fact the first civilian to die in the war was killed on the islands.  The following is an extract from the website which documents the landscape and history of Scapa Flow in Orkney:

It was still the early days of the war but already Goering’s Luftwaffe were wreaking havoc on the home fleet in Scapa Flow, and 16 March 1940 would be a date that the people of Orkney would never forget.

That evening at around 8pm, 15 Junkers 88 enemy aircraft were reported over Scapa Flow and a number of high explosive bombs were dropped causing a fair amount of damage and injuring seven Navy personnel. Anti-Aircraft guns opened fire as did ships' guns, but despite early reports of two aircraft being shot down, no losses were recorded by intelligence reports.

As the raiders fled the scene, the aircraft still with bombs flew inland and decided to jettison their bomb loads some four miles east of Stromness as they reached Brig o'Waithe.

On hearing the raiders overhead, Jim Isbister and his wife Lily rushed to the door and amidst the falling bombs, they pulled two passers-by - Mrs Burnett and Mrs Jane Muir - inside for shelter.

Just split seconds later, a bomb fell on Miss Isabela Macleod’s house across the road and as Jim rushed from his house to go and help, another bomb exploded killing him instantly. Miss Macleod although wounded, managed to crawl from the wrecked cottage and Mrs Muir was slightly injured by splinters. Fortunately Jim’s wife Lily and baby Neil survived uninjured.

In total, five people were killed and nine injured in the raid.  Jim Isbister became the first civilian to be killed by enemy action in World War II. A service was held for Jim at St Magnus Cathedral, conducted by his brother-in-law Rev. TG Tait, and Rev. J MacLeod of Stenness, after which he was buried in St Olaf’s cemetery.

But Eric came safe through the war.  He had plenty to eat, perhaps more than he had been used to as a working class boy in the industrial North West.  He loved Orkney.  As an older man he would trot out his stories of Orkney, worn smooth by the telling,  to make you smile or laugh but he would always at some point tell you "It was the land of milk and honey".  He loved the fact that he could send food home and had all sorts of stories of working out how to send eggs or, on one memorable occasion, a leg of lamb, home to his mother, sisters and wife-to-be.

Other than Orkney, his whole life was Rochdale until he came to live with us in December 2010 after his first ever spell in hospital.  He had very limited horizons in many ways.  He had no desire to travel, unlike his wife who chafed at the restrictions which hemmed her in as a working class woman whose health was poor.  Give him three meals a day and the chance to lay a bet on the horses, people to chat to, a bit of TV to watch and he was happy.  When he lived with us I used to find this narrowness of view both extraordinary and from time to time extraordinarily annoying.  How could he be so little interested in other lives, other people (except family), other countries, other foods, the whole glorious panoply of rich and complicated life?  It was as if, faced by a tapestry which covered an entire wall, he insisted on looking at one dark and dirty square inch in the bottom corner.  But perhaps that was the secret of his undoubted contentment with life.  He didn't want much but he knew what he did want and he took pleasure in it right until illness overshadowed the last weeks of his life.  How many people manage to live a truly happy life?  Eric did, in his small corner, and in it he did a great deal of good and very little harm.  He was a good father, a good grandfather, a loyal worker, a good friend, a good man.

Whenever I hear the quote "Bloom where you are planted" I think of Eric.  His roots were deep.  Perhaps you can't have deep roots and wide horizons.  Yet he took what might have seemed an unpromising start in life and he lived that life cheerfully, with energy and good humour and love.  He honoured his relationships with a deep and wordless loyalty, caring for his wife through her many illnesses, looking after his ailing brother in law, doing his best for his daughter, son and grandchildren.  It wasn't a financial best, he never had much money, although what he did have he was generous with.  It was an emotional best.  There was never any question at all that he loved you and gave you that love unstintingly.  He asked very little of you in return. 

Eric was one of nature's gentlemen.  I am glad to have known him and glad to be married to his son.  I will miss him.