Beci Orpin’s Blog

my mum has been continuing to go through piles of stuff from my grandmas old house. there is a lot of it – she kept everything – looks like i have definitely inherited the hoarding gene from her (and my other dear now-passed gran had a chronic knick-knack obsession – pretty sure i have that gene as well!). this week i was presented with some new treasures – first was this beautiful box of old watercolours -

i am an absolute sucker for old packaging, especially of the vaguely chinese variety!

the next discovery is equally, if not more, beautiful. but also quite heart-wrenching. my mum was the youngest child of three (she has 2 older brothers), and when she was 8, my grandma had another baby called patrick, who died when he was 5 days old. i had heard my mum and grandma talk about it before, but more as a reference to a point in time (”oh that was just after patrick died“). when i asked about it, my mum told me patrick was born with lots of complications, maybe a hole in the heart, and in my head i just put it down to one of those medical things that happened often back then, and didn’t give it too much thought.

that was, until i discovered these – the sympathy cards and newspaper death notice from when patrick died. the cards are so beautiful in a quiet and sombre way. it’s not just their vintage design, but the simplicity of the type and how sincere they look. but the bit that really really got to me, was when i found an envelope addressed to “our mother and father“, complete with little crossed out spelling mistake. i guess it was written by mum or one of her brothers – a tiny card giving support to their grieving parents. it made it all-of-the-sudden all very real.

on a happier note… my grandma is doing much better! her alzheimer’s medication seems to be working and she has stopped calling her new home a prison. yesterday she told my sister she is going to get law degree so she can fight for the rights of her fellow home-mates, and lead them in some kind of elderly-folk revolution. you are AWESOME gran!

Tags: family

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 28th, 2009 at 11:59 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.