Janet Worstall RIP
Please pray for the repose of the soul of Janet Worstall
who died recently. Her Requiem Mass will be offered on
Tuesday the 17th of March at 2pm. We offer our prayerful
support to her family and pray that her soul and those of
all the faithful departed through the mercy of God may
rest in peace.
By the time it happened it was a release. Given that Griffiths – the family line she took many characteristics from – Turnbulls – her maiden name – and Worstalls never do anything by halves she had been suffering from two – count ’em, two – dementias for some years now. When diagnosed she feared that they would entirely wipe her out before the body completely failed. That didn’t happen, the body went first as she wished. But housebound for some years, bedbound for the past 6 months at least, in a care home the last few months.
Of course there was decline. She asked, in her final weeks, where Mike – her husband of 70 odd years – was and was told that he’d died 7 years before. “Well, if he’s going to do something like that then what’s the point of him?” Which is, well, you know, a question assembled philosophers have been trying to answer for many millennia now.
A long life – she was 92 – well lived, children, great grandchildren and all. Trucked around the world as a naval wife, a teacher of English as a foreign language when we’d all left home. A good time had by all. Vale.
She was always grateful for one grand thing, that she was spared the pain of having to bury any of her children, something that afflicts so much of humanity – and happened to a close friend – and near all until just recently. Her father was a GP in Birmingham and she saw, first hand, what happened in the slums pre-war and heard much more about it. Some of his short stories have just surfaced and one about a GP pootling off after having given a diptheria stricken kid a tracheotomy – in pre-antibiotic times – as the only possible treatment shocks by current standards.
I should, perhaps, say more about Mother being gone but that, in reality, happened a couple of years back. That’s thus just an accepted fact, not a raw wound any more.
They say you only become a man when your father dies. That wasn’t quite it for me. Naval father, often gone in childhood etc. But now? Yes. And it’s becuase of something most might well consider odd. Perhaps a flaw in my character. But I’ve lived in many places – countries as well as different places within them. And I’ve never considered any of them “home”. Whether rentals or owned. That was always that house of my parents in Bath – it’s been the one constant in that portion of life since gaining memory as a toddler. Whereever I was, whatever was happening, I always knew that if it went pie shaped there was an attic I could retreat into and then plot a way out back into the real world. Had to do it once, for a month, too.
Now that – at the speed of the legal system – will be gone. Mother went some time ago now that security of home has as well. I have to start pretending to be an adult now, at 62. Can’t say I’m liking it very much.
Sorry to hear that, Tim. It always affects you deeply, no matter your or her age or circumstances. Just try and roll with it and don’t forget the stiff upper lip…
Yup. It comes in handy at times like this. It’s what it’s for.
You have my sympathy, Tim.
As Grist says, you just have to roll with it.
Condolences, Tim. As Grist says, no matter how you prepare yourself mentally it’s still hard.
There’s rather a lot about at the moment. Cousin’s wife’s funeral in Scotland yesterday; aged aunt’s in Jersey in a fortnight; aged good friend up the road imminent; mother-in-law in Japan likewise. Daughter’s med school pal operated on for rare ovarian cancer. This year’s not off to a great start.
Indeed. Had my fathers funeral last week, traveled from NZ to attend. One of those things that has to be done.
A friend of ours, in her eighties, lost a middle-aged son a few years ago. She never got over it and fell into decline. She died quite soon after. Of her son’s death she had said “Bloody covid!”
(It was not the moment, I felt, to say “Bloody covid jab more like!”)
Your mother was fortunate to live to such an age without losing a child.
Condolences and best wishes.
When my mother in law died at the grand age of 98, she had lost two daughters. The late Mrs L being one of them.
My condolences.
Sorry to hear that, being in much the same situation – mother in a care home, waiting for the inevitable, but already ‘gone’ to all intents and purposes.
You have my sympathy. My sister in law went in to a care home before COVID and the state paid because she was deemed to have less than12 months to live. After 2 years they demanded her family pick up the tab and she eventually died last August. My wife went to say “goodbye” to her 3 times.
She had very few lucid moments over those years but apparently was just before she died.
Sorry to hear that Julia. All my best wishes.
My condolences, Tim, and best wishes.
Sorry to hear this. Recently met someone else who had never had what you might call ‘a family home’, a place where you turned over the ground and planted your first tree or daffodil and it’s still there when you go past though the ownership has changed. A place forever England.
That was the biggest shock to my girlfiend: after selling her late mother’s home she happened to be be passing and the 60-year lovingly-tended garden had been ripped out and paved over for parking.
It’s best never to go back or look back.
I have found that. I have very little nostalgia for any of the places where I have lived in the past.
Except ( slightly ) the Austrian house that we rebuilt, which I looked at on Google a while back. The new owner had done nothing to it in the following decade since she bought it.
So sad to hear this, Tim. Vale.
Condolences Tim.
Sorry for your loss, Tim.
Condolences, Tim. If there is love then the loss is painful no matter the circumstances. I think I see hints, in your mini tribute, of her being generous and refractory; characteristics we have come to admire in you.
My Mum departed last year (similar gap to my Dad) so I’m feeling some of it with you. By coincidence she was also named Janet (went by Jane). I also get you on the home front. By further coincidence that sale completes tomorrow. Today I’m going across to take the meter readings and honeysuckle cuttings. Lock the door, key through, and drive away one last time.
As I indicate above, that one last time is going to be the hardest part for me I think.
Best wishes to you.
Get the kids (grandkids?) out in the sun with you asap.
Condolences, Tim. Leaving the family home for the last time – and as an adult orphan – was extremely poignant for me. My family home was a place of safety in childhood, and a place I could retreat to in early adulthood and where I was always welcome.
“Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
There is a time for the evening under starlight,
A time for the evening under lamplight
(The evening with the photograph album).
Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.
… In my end is my beginning.”
I have that to come. The house I was brought up in. Where one of my brothers and my sister were born. In the same bedroom where my dad passed away.
When I go back to see my mum, I still sleep overnight in “Susan’s room” though Susan moved out 40 years ago.
One day will be the last day I walk out that front door. After that, I won’t even drive down that road.
Sorry for your loss. Our thoughts and wishes go with you.
It does sound like she had a good life though, that needs to be remembered. The final bit is never easy and shouldn’t overshadow what occurred before.
Good luck.
Condolences, Tim. Never easy even when you’re braced for it.
My grandmother died at 93. The vicar said in the eulogy, it was a timely death. I would suggest the same here. Condolences all the same.
So sorry to hear your news, Tim. This is one rite of passage that none of us wants to go through.
It sounds glib, but you have to look for silver linings (though, as the Grateful Dead rightly observed, even they are tinged with a touch of grey).
This was brought home to me when I started sorting out my mother’s flat and opened up her laptop to discover that she was halfway through her favourite online game and had paused her progress: she had no idea she wouldn’t be returning from hospital and was planning to finish it later.
Whilst that spooked me, at least she didn’t know she was making a one-way journey. That would have been vastly worse.
My sincere condolences. I’ve just attended my fathers funeral. At 96 he’d got frailer with every annual visit, but kept his marbles on the good days. Memories are what are left. Hold on to the good ones.
Sincere condolences Tim.
Condolences, Tim. Know how you feel. I miss Mum although it’s been a few years now. I do regret I didn’t see much of her in her final years. She died whilst I was in the air, flying back to UK, having been told the end was near.
Shame she never met my companion. She would have loved her. Same sort of people. Mum was Docklands, lived through the Blitz, lost her brother to the RAF bombers. La Princesa’s out the favelas of Brasil. My father would have been horrified. Her colour! Her nationality! Her background! Mum would have been greatly amused & would thoroughly approve she now wears her rings. Perfect fit! Could have been made for her.
After a period of reflection, you might consider the Mad Uncle paradigm for the remainder of your earthly existence. English Life Tables give you 21 years on average, though a Mediterranean diet should boost that figure. Go for it!
Condolences
“Well, if he’s going to do something like that then what’s the point of him?”
That’s actually quite a good line.
Having reached the age when various gaga relatives ask me how my father is, he having been dead this last seven years, I have found it easiest to borrow a line from Albert Campion and reply that he is “as well as can be expected, in the circumstances”.
Condolences.
Sincere condolences Tim
Time does heal albeit slowly – cherish the good memories
It scars rather than heals.
Hugs from me as well. Last year the legal system finally ground to the end of selling my Mum’s place, and I happened to walk past it a fortnight ago and it was really weird seeing a home of 45+ years shrouded in refurbishment stuff, full of strangers, and not having any “right” to enter. Some stuff sticks around long after other stuff has passed on.
Eternal rest grant unto her, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon her.
May she rest in peace.
When Gamecock’s mother died, it was a time of quiet reflection. Mr Worstall, since you posted this, I will comment.
She won life’s lottery.
When my first wife died, I cried for two days. When Mom died, I cried for less than an hour. Because she had won life. 4 months short of a hundred, and had accomplishments that affected people worldwide. Your mother lived way beyond the average number of years, and had significant accomplishments. Until we can live forever, your mother couldn’t have done any better.
As Big Sis said, given that she got to 92 she can hardly complain she was shortchanged on this game of life…..
Condolences Tim. My parents died a few years ago. My Mum went into full-blown dementia but lived for several years in a care home and died just 3 weeks short of her 100th. I had already mentally said goodbye much earlier so the event didn’t hit me as hard as it might have. What got me was my Dad going. He was devoted to her, visited her every day, but then the prostate cancer finally broke free of the drugs. He knew he was going and he could no longer look after her. That was very hard to take.
My mother’s parents buried 3 of their nine children. The cot death of a 6 month old, a motor accident involving a 12 year old and (my) uncle Jim who died early in his 50s.
Theirs was a very different generation.
We all die eventually but it sounds as though your mum lived a full and rewarding life, Tim. If you were both proud of the other, that in itself says much.
I’ll add my condolences, Tim – always a tough time, even though you could see it coming. My experience with both my mother’s and my father’s death was that the good memories remained, the bad ones faded; I hope you will find the same.
Sorry to hear that Tim.
My old Mum died the same day Trump got shot in the lug-hole in 2024. She was 91. It had strangely little effect on me. She had been ill for some time and I realised that the end was nigh. My siblings were more upset.
Comfort to you. It’s hard.
My M&D are both 92, both starting down that dementia path. Won’t be long, I think. Then, I’ll try to focus on how life itself is fatal – none of us make it out – but they beat odds and had 92 decent years of it.
Condolences Tim.
Condolences Tim. Thank you for sharing.
My condolences Tim to you and yours, not the best time of life.
My condolences, Tim
I gave up praying for the repose of souls a long time ago, but I just made an exception. Peace be with you.