Shirley

We heard on Saturday that my cousin Shirley died.  And that took me right back to Nabbs, when our granny was alive and us cousins used to get together regularly.  So I decided to blog the picture of us all on the lawn at Nabbs - Shirley being second row left, next to cousin Richard, and me at the back row end right.

As you can see she was such an attractive little girl. A tomboy too.  I remember that she took on our fierce cat Whisky - when she was only a toddler - and won!

At that age she was very picky about her food, and Aunt Kay spent a lot of time in the kitchen at Nabbs cooking up tempting dishes to please her - which Shirley would usually have a mouthful of, and spurn.  Then, one day, we found her in the scullery kitchen, happily dining out of the cat's dish, with Whisky sitting glumly beside her.

Whisky was a fierce biter and scratcher, if annoyed.  He was found as a kitten down a rabbit hole in the country (by a friend of our parents), and the family joke came to be "Which country? Africa?" (as in "Is there a pride missing its lion?").

I put him in Disraeli Hall, which was my attempt to put something of Nabbs in a book.  I may have ended up putting in more of him than Nabbs though.  He appears as Boy Tom.

So hearing the sad news about Shirley has brought back the days at Nabbs vividly, and also reminds me of staying with Uncle Freddie and Aunt Kay and the children - Shirley being their eldest daughter.  They lived in the Kielder Forest, quiet, remote, with lovely country all around.   I remember driving with Uncle Freddie and Shirley one day through the forest, and getting out to open some big gates so a party of the gentry in a shooting brake could drive through - on their way to decimate the pheasants, I guess.

I stayed there sometimes at weekends in my Uni days - a very welcome home from home. 

While I remember Shirley as one of the littles, my brother John remembers her as one of the big girls, one who was kind and motherly towards him. 

And Penny remembers going riding with Shirley, so I guess they were both horse-mad little girls.   It also comes back to me that for some years of her childhood, Shirley had to wear a back brace. I don't remember it slowing her down at all.

I met her husband George many years later, at a family funeral. They were very happy together and it would seem they have remained so. Which is an achievement worth celebrating in today's disjointed world.

But it will be a strange new world for George without Shirley in it.

How close that awful edge is for all the older  of the cousins now...  and I am the oldest.  Soon there will be no-one left who remembers the world of Nabbs and the family that lived there.  In my childhood it all seemed so permanent.

Well, I hope that one day I will see them all again - when the time comes for Jehovah to wake the dead from their dreamless sleep.

So I will end with this lovely promise, from our Creator, Jehovah, who does not lie:

“Your dead will live.

My corpses will rise up.

Awake and shout joyfully,

You residents in the dust!

For your dew is as the dew of the morning,

And the earth will let those powerless in death come to life."

- Isaiah 26:19