Clematis

By Nick Gilmore

Published: 21 Jun, 2025

Saturday

We’re all struggling a bit. It’s not just the ridiculous heat and the early sunrise that’s disrupting our sleep. Looking at the number of unpublished posts here and the state of the pile of paperwork on my desk I think I’ve been struggling mentally for a while.

Writing has been an important process for me. When it was working well the words just flowed. I could unpack the day’s aggravations and publish something that read well without needing any editing with ease. The act of publishing would draw a line under the day and I could go to bed with a quiet mind. Now when I sit down to write my head is too full to organise my thoughts properly and every sentence is a struggle.

We’re gradually getting on top of the stuff that we’ve brought back from our parents’ houses though. It feels like we’re getting our home back. Lesley’s last couple of trips to her dad’s house got done on the train which allowed me to get on here and removed the temptation to bring more stuff back. Our house was just big enough when we were both office-bound and only used it to eat and sleep in. Now, we’re finding it a bit small to live in when we’re in it all the time. Having the contents of two other houses move through it is a challenge and it’s getting us down.

I have wondered about the wisdom of bringing stuff back here to sort through but with our parents’ houses both being empty we can’t load up the recycling bins there. We’d be caught out by having to go back on collection day to put the bins out and bring them back in again or leave them out for a week and signal that the houses were unoccupied which isn’t clever. Sorting stuff here is more comfortable too. Neither house has a chair that doesn’t give me back ache, neither house has the fridge switched on so cold drinks aren’t an option, neither house is easy to cook in so we end up getting a meal deal from the local supermarket and busting our diets. It’s far easier to go over, fill up the car with stuff and bring it home even if that turns our own house into a recycling centre.

The progress we’ve made allowed for a change of tack today. I’d worked through Lesley’s dad’s art archive and was able to turn back to dealing with my Mum’s stuff. Among the treasures I found was a box containing mementos of Mum and Dad’s wedding day. All the greeting cards, a telegram from the people at the local pub and a copy of the parish magazine where the wedding was announced. Another box contained all the cards and messages Mum got after Dad died. They included letters from a chap that Dad had done his National Service with in the early 1950s and from colleagues he’d known from his early days in the police. I took photos of all of them and put them to one side for my siblings. They’ll be kept with the other things of Dad’s that Mum had kept such as his primary school reports and the certificates he got for ballroom dancing that he was awarded before they were married. I found that all a bit tough. I’m still finding it more difficult to deal with Dad’s death than Mum’s.

Meanwhile, Lesley started working of a file of her dad’s papers that had been lost under the mountain of art materials and only re-emerged in the past couple of days. The older papers were well organised and were letters and keep-sakes from when he worked in Africa – Lesley was a toddler at the time. But as the papers got more recent the level of organisation got much more random. Statements, letters and certificates just rammed in without any apparent logic or thought. The commentary from the living room got more and more desperate and exasperated.

“Here’s another account that I didn’t know about!…”

“Oh NO! This is mum’s money! I didn’t know about that either…”

Lesley thought she’d contacted all the banks and whatnot about her dad’s savings and investments. She thought she was ready to send off the forms to the tax man. Turns out she isn’t. Yet another knock-back that she didn’t need.

Bloody hell.

Author’s Note

My Mum was in a nursing home in the Thames Valley for a year and a half until she passed away in December 2024. My Father-in-law went into the same home the following January. But Lesley’s sister didn’t approve and made the situation so awkward that he had to be moved. He passed away in March 2025. Names and locations have been changed or hidden to protect the identities of those involved.

Image Credit

Original Image by Nick Gilmore. June 2025.

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