A service to be remembered.

Today we held the service for Dorothy. As we expected there were just a few of us there. Alas Dorothy lost contact with all the great people she knew in Glasgow and abroad because of the illness. I hope that maybe some will find this web site and know that they were always special to mom.

There was not a dry eye in the house, and biased as I am, it was a good service for a change though how anyone heard it I have no idea, I lost it completely after a few minutes, not helped by the wonderful music we played. It was good simply for the personal side of it. The pictures you see here were handed round for all to hold and feel. Music played throughout. The first tune was Lakme's Flower Duet. If you think of the british airways advert then you have it....

So here are the words that I managed to blub out.....


Welcome everyone,
I’m really glad you all came today, Babs and I pondered for a long time wondering what Dorothy would have wanted for a service. I don’t think she would have liked this place much….If she had her way we would no doubt be in a forest somewhere hugging a tree or sabotaging chain saws, seriously, I remember being mortified at her doing that when I was a kid only it wasn’t a chain saw, it was a 20 ton digger and she poured sugar into it’s fuel tank, How dare these animals destroy a beautiful landscape to build an ore terminal. Dorothy was an eco warrior when no one new what that meant. She had guts did mom.

I don’t know about you but I hate these places (crematoriums), cold impersonal, they don’t reflect anything but misery. Even worse is when some sanctimonious minister stands up and spouts forth what a great person so and so was when you know they never even met them.

You cant describe a person like that, whether they were good parents or good daughters or went to church once a week like a clockwork automaton, that doesn’t describe a person.

(At this point the sound of Barbour's, Adagio surrounded us. )

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Look at this, 18 years old, 1945 the war is just over or just about to end. Look at the stride, purposeful, going somewhere, all her life ahead of her. Strong, wilful, look at the eyes. Excitement and determination. A future to build. Her head is cocked slightly to the side, she is listening to music others cant hear. Within a couple of years from now, she is off to America to make her fortune. To live a life….And she did by all accounts, well she didn’t make a fortune but she certainly lived a life…..

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Look at this. 14 years later, 1959 32 years old, Married now, with a young child. Oh so Beautiful with style and verve. Even more determined but now protective too. A child to bring up, a home to make oh and plans too…..things to do. Fights to fight too. Ban the bomb, the CND marches down Aberdeens main street pushing her pram and waiving her banner., Green peace. Save the whale. There were Kindnesses to do, people and animals to help and protect from the evils that men do out there. A remarkable picture…..

Time passes…….

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16 years go by. Look at this….1975, 48 years old, younger than I am right now. Look at this. The face is older. Some lines have appeared. Life has dealt her some savage blows. A divorce just passed, her mother ill and senile and moved in to our home so Dorothy can care for her. Dementia is a terrible thing and when her delightful son is not making bombs and blowing up half the garden, (she should never have given me that damn chemistry set) then her mother was burning the kitchen down with chip pan fires and hiding the evidence at the bottom of the garden……….

She is working in a mental hospital outpatients and the money is rubbish and the work depressing. She gets migraine headaches and bouts of depression but look at the eyes, they truly are the window to the soul. She has plans. The house is for sale and she has her eye on a new place out in the country, it’s big, vast tracts of land, it’s got potential and she doesn’t know the meaning of the word cant. She has just met this real handsome guy, John Conner, he has offered to buy the house off her and even asked her out for a meal, he’s crazy but then the good ones always are, Normal is boring……..

(Now the sounds of Stanley Myers Cavatina rang clear)
But time ticks on
Within a couple of years from this photo, her mother is dead, John Conner is dead, her son has left home and Alzhiemers is slowly eating away at her capabilities. Oh it’s years yet before the really bad stuff happens but it’s a beginning and she knows what it is, she recognises the symptoms.

But throughout it all she is smiling, laughing, making weird jokes that others don’t get, helping people, rescuing animals and fighting the good fight. Trying to delay or stop the enevitable.

She nearly did it. Thirty three years down the line from this picture. 81 years old and here we are today.

But mom didn’t die last Friday, Mom died years ago, she crept away so quietly and softly that none of us noticed she was gone. Oh her heart ticked on, A heart that big, of course it did. And just occasionally, through a smile or a chuckle or a glance, like you spot a small child peaking out the windows of a huge house. Just a glimpse, a flicker from the eyes and it was gone and you looked at her and you wondered if it was really there at all.

How do you judge a life, well obviously by what you leave behind and in moms case it’s me and her grandchildren here and the memories that each of us who met her have. And even if all you ever knew of her was a wee smile and a chuckle even then, she touched you, she became part of you. Warmed your heart just a wee bit.

But there was more…..

Let me tell you a wee story, not about mom, about me……as you know I broke my leg a few months ago and whilst sitting in hostpital, miserable and bored and a little bit scared, I logged onto one of those self help sites (http://www.mybrokenleg.com/) that spring up everywhere on the internet. A great place full of sad scared miserable funny people all ranting and raving and asking broken leg questions. You quickly get the measure of people even through the written word, there’s the selfish ones, The downright weird ones, the frightened puppies and the generous honest and loving ones. Just the usual mix of humanity really….And there was one wifey kept popping up, an nice lady, another animal loving hippy crazy type person just like mom, But she was always holding peoples hands, cheering them up. Checking they were ok. She was in a wheel chair after a really bad accident. and cos she is not wealthy and lives in a country where, without money or insurance, you can forget getting medical help, she wasn’t getting better herself, so she spent her time helping others. A cool lady. When someone asked what physiotherapy she was getting, she said “none, I cant afford luxuries like that.”

So to cut a long story short, I bought her some physiotherapy, I sent a few hundred dollars over and got her some help and sure enough she is walking now. Slowly with a stick and a bit of a limp but she is getting there and doing ok last I heard and I haven’t told anyone that story nor any of the other stories till today not even Barbara. Because it’s nobodies business…. It wasn’t important, well except to the lady.

But it’s relevant to today, Why do you help total strangers,,,, because that’s what Dorothy would do…That’s what she has left behind.. That’s what she taught me to do, not big effusive in your face gestures, Not anonymous tax deductible payments to big expensive charities run by men in tailored suits….just a life time of little direct kindnesses. Sitting having a meal with a beggar or stopping for someone who breaks down, Not in some kind of selfish bargain with God,
“if I’m a good boy, I will go to heaven…”

Well sorry but if that’s how God works then he can shove heaven. neither of us believed in that stuff. She believed just in a simple humanity. Mom spent her whole life handing out a series of small kindnesses to neighbours, friends and strangers, if fact to every living thing. That’s what she leaves behind…..And like ripples in water, through all the people the kindnesses were given to and through her son and her grandchildren, Dorothy’s effect on life and people spreads outwards to touch us all.

I highly recommend it, it makes for really good Karma and I think both mom and I believe in good Karma. Oh It doesn’t stop the bad things in life but it makes the good things even better and the memories even sweeter.

Memories………..
Memories are fragile things, Ask mom, she lost all hers….These photos came out of a box full of photos some dating back to the earliest days of photography. People with long coats and animated faces…relatives, friends and we have no idea who the hell they are.

So All of you, Please don’t just make memories, set them down, record them, at the very least write some names and dates down on the back of the ruddy photos. Don’t waste memories, they are way more precious than you think and they are so easily lost……..

A few days after mom was born in 1927, an American poet Max Ehrmann sat down and wrote one of moms favourite pieces of verse. It was placed in the wall and I grew up with it's sentiments. If you lived through the 60’s you may remember it.

(As I pulled out the text to read it, the music changed to Pie Jesu, the andrew lloyd webber version)

Desiderata

Go placidly amid the noise and haste,

and remember what peace there may be in silence.

As far as possible without surrender

be on good terms with all persons.

Speak your truth quietly and clearly;

and listen to others,

even the dull and the ignorant;

they too have their story.



Avoid loud and aggressive persons,

they are vexations to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others,

you may become vain and bitter;

for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.





Keep interested in your own career, however humble;

it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs;

for the world is full of trickery.

But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;

many persons strive for high ideals;

and everywhere life is full of heroism.





Be yourself.

Especially, do not feign affection.

Neither be cynical about love;

for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment

it is as perennial as the grass.





Take kindly the counsel of the years,

gracefully surrendering the things of youth.

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.

But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.

Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline,

be gentle with yourself.





You are a child of the universe,

no less than the trees and the stars;

you have a right to be here.

And whether or not it is clear to you,

no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.





Therefore be at peace with God,

whatever you conceive Him to be,

and whatever your labors and aspirations,

in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.





With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,

it is still a beautiful world.

Be cheerful.

Strive to be happy.

Max said something else too. (At this point in the service, with Pie Jesu the requiem playing in the background, Young Jack, Dorothies 11 year grandson stood and in a clear voice recited the following...as he spoke, the curtains round mom closed for the last time)

To be loved in life is life's greatest gift.

To be loved in death for some bit of beauty one has given the world, is to take from death some of its sting.

Life has need of all the charm of word and sound, of colour and carven stone that love can give it.


Dorothy is loved both in life and in death and her memories and her series of small kindnesses will ripple on through time for a long long time.

Now in true Scottish tradition, and at moms expense, lets leave this miserable place and go and make some good memories come alive. Lets celebrate our humanity…..Because That…. I think….. is exactly what Dorothy would have wanted.

Thank you all for coming…..
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We walked away to the wonderful sound of Ella Fitzgerald singing "summer time". It's sound lifting our feet and hearts.

And indeed we retired to a local hostelry and consumed a few nippy sweeties and swapped tales of love and regrets.

To all who came, thank you, to all who would have been there but couldn't thank you. To every one else. Thank you and take only love and hope for when all is said and done, it is a wonderful life.

Chris Ward 30th May 2008

A short history of Dorothy Margaret Edward Ward, formerly Bain

Once upon a time when things were different but somehow still the same.

In 1928 there was a wee lassie born to Bruce and Isa Bain in the outskirts of Glasgow in a village called High Burnside. Bruce was overjoyed and worked hard as a salesman to keep his family comfortable. His health was badly impaired since he was gassed during the great war but Isa was less impressed at this time consuming intruder to her social life. She was an only child as there was no way Isa was ever going through that pregnancy nonsense again. The childs name was Dorothy Margaret Edward? Bain (Her father was quite keen on having a boy apparently) and from the outset she was trouble. Well with a name like Edward, what else… At aged 10 she was drawing the most beautiful cartoon comics, perfect in detail and imagination. A tom boy an outsider with a humour most terrible and fierce. She always pushed boundaries, if anyone could break a leg jumping out a tree with an umbrella for a parachute, it would be her. As soon as she could she escaped her parochial lower middleclass life to a world of promise moving to America. There she worked in places like California and Chicago at the British embassy and British consul as a secretary. She lived a life.
Cavalier of parties and art with freedom from the sanctimonious opinions she left behind at home. She grew into a wonderful human being, A flower of exotic though occasionally fragile beauty as most artists are. She painted and wrote and eventually after a somewhat complex set of events, married a good looking young Scotsman a scientist by trade, a genius by nature hovering on that fine line between brilliance and madness and for better or worse came back to Scotland to live. Perhaps she got that bit wrong but remember that in those days people did the right thing rather than the best thing more often than not. We none of us truly escape our breeding.

She hit the sixties running. A flower child, an active member of CND marching the streets for freedom and an end to tyranny. She sought enlightenment and occasionally found it. Her husband was a student at Aberdeen university and they moved to a wee flat four flights up in Market street. There her son Chris was born amidst the noise and bustle of a busy fishing port and with her husband off working in the rarefied and exclusive atmosphere of a major Scottish university, Dorothy found stuff to do. She was always busy at something, sometimes animals, sometimes people, sometimes family or a cause but always busy. Aberdeen though was a long way from home and to be honest, Dorothy didn’t fit well in the ultra conservative city. So when his studies ended and an opportunity came up for work in Glasgow, the Wards moved back home just in time to lose the father she loved.

They originally bought a small modern detached house in Cambuslang. It was new and comfortable sitting on a hill overlooking the city and to some extent a bit isolated. It was stuck onto a street of expensive houses and lacked the camaraderie that she was used to. Family life was a mixed bag and 2 strong willed crazy people in the same house was not an easy mix. They stumbled on though as people do. Their son grew surrounded by clever people and giant expectations but never quite matching either. She had another son, with four legs and a wet nose. Nicky the poodle would sit with us for meals and the two children would gobble the food down as quickly as possible because whoever finished first could help themselves to the others dinner. Dorothy was a great gardener and home maker but her culinary skills were lacking. Roast chicken every Sunday was always a scary event with roasted steel potatoes and meat that flung itself suicidely from the bone whenever a carving knife approached it.
Bath time with the two kids together always saved time though the poodle kept the toys to his end. There were other pets too from cats, tortoises, rabbits and a variety of rodents so the cemetry at the bottom of the garden was kept busy.

Holidays were spent caravanning on the West coast or flying to Dinard on the North coast of France. Simple places and peaceful. Perhaps too peaceful for a woman with plans. Their child was often sickly with Asthma and allergies and things were never smooth but then what life ever is.

Dorothy had ambition and that meant making it through property deals. The first place was a holiday home on the West coast of Scotland, a small village called Fairlie in Ayrshire. It was small but they had plans and soon her husband had rebuilt the place with huge picture windows looking onto a spectacular view of the Firth of Clyde. A small anchorage, the Cumbrae Islands and a beach at the front door. It was a wonderful place. Good people, friends and even extended family close by. This period was one of the happiest times of her life. Village life on the West coast was always warm no matter the weather. Walks in the hills and along the long sandy beaches brought an enviable lifestyle and summer evenings were often spent on the beach with barbeques and friends and songs and wine. A little echo of the carefree days in America.

But there were bigger adventures on the horizon and the first was moving up. The next property was big. Very big. On central Avenue in Cambuslang she found a corner house with lots of land and outhouses and by anyone’s standards was Grand with a capital G. This was her style. A Gone with the Wind world of drawing rooms and dining rooms and sculleries. Ghosts and history and lives embedded in the very stonework. The ghost in the dining room was unusual, everytime you entered it, it seemed like you were walking into a party but everyone had stopped and turned to look at you. It was a very strange place. Dorothy blossomed in it. Painting and writing and planning bigger plans. She finally felt that maybe things could be really good. There were projects galore and her husband spent his time building a huge sailing boat in the barn of a garage. She started her own business, “Central typing agency” and brought up her child often alone. But as always plans go astray when life intervenes and people take on too much. Illnesses and stress took their toll, the marriage was heading for shallow waters. Belts had to be tightened and occasional separations turned into something more permanent.

Dorothy bought a smaller house in Buchanan Drive, her husband an occasional visitor finally moved his residence to the Fairlie house and they shared the child. Buchanan Drive was Semideteched and red sandstone, it had possibilities ie it was rough as hell but months of scraping wall paper and painting and furnishing on a shoestring made it a home to be proud of. Dorothy was not a quitter, not ever, when the business stopped making money, she got a job , She cared for her mother and lived a life more fully than I think anyone I have ever known. (And I have known some incredible people) Her world was animals and people and the bullshit merchants could go screw themselves. If a cause be there, she fought it tooth and nails. No body screwed with Dorothy. To fight her was to lose.....fast approaching 45 she had big ambitions. Her mother was getting worse and had to move in but Isa's Parkinson’s disease and senility made life interesting. Occasional kitchen fires, pots and pans buried at the bottom of the garden, she was even found hiding in the cupboard under the stairs in case the nasty man next door found her…..It was never dull. Eventually her mother had to go to a nursing home and as usual with these illnesses, the end was rough. A divorce came as light relief in the madness of the time. Her work was full on hard graft as a secretary in a mental hospital outpatients. This is fine for normal people but when you wear your heart on the outside, and your work brings you into touch with victims of the horrors that you only hear about in the newspapers, well it was a hard time to say the least.

Dorothy bought a flat, and then another one, renting them out. Her son moved out and soon the big move came, a huge house was purchased in Blanefield. Again, it needed work but Dorothy knew she could do it. How she juggled the moneys for this from a secretaries wages, well that will remain a mystery.

She had lovers but only wondrous rogues with stories to tell and hearts a mile wide and Glasgow has an abundance of them (Us) She would stand side by side with them and take on the world. But money was tight and belts had to be pulled in to get the work done on the shell of the Blanefield house. Initially she lived in one of the flats in the roughest part of Rutherglen. She would take on robbers and muggers and all kinds of strange characters. The sight of little Dorothy chasing a 6’ robber up Rutherglen high street waving her handbag at him happened more than once. When a druggy rang the doorbell and pushed passed her grabbing her purse and then making his escape down the tenement stairs, he was surprised to find Dorothy on his back holding on for dear life. He got all the way down and out the front door before he finally shook her off only to be taken down a few steps later by her neighbours who heard her curses. You don’t mess with Dorothy. She kept some weed plants for culinary and medicinal purposes in the window overlooking the police station but when it was pointed out that this might be somewhat dangerous she merely said dont be silly dear, those young laddies are far too young to recognise these and sure enough, they never did. Who would suspect a little middleaged lady to be a dangerous hippy criminal.

Life throws curveballs, we all know that. Some are temporary, some are brutal and life changing and some you don’t even see when they first hit you. The first was a full frontal attack. Her boyfreind John Connor, a man who made her cry with laughter, who made her world sing, fell ill and died, so young and tall and strong and yet taken away in a single heartbeat. The second krept up unawares. Sly and wicked it came sidling up in the full light of day. It was the onset, the first signs of Alzheimer’s disease. Little confusions, little forgets. But it had a fight on it's hands, she knew it for what it was having nursed her mother through it. She told no-one. She fought it and kept on working and towards the early 90's it might take a couple of hours to drive to work, (A 20 minute journey) but she always got there and afterwards would eventually find her car and find her way home. Her work understood better than most, they were all psychiatrists after all and they allowed her to continue working till retirement age. It would take her a day to write a letter but it would be written and it would be correct, mostly.

Now she was small and she was slight, you might even pass her by in the street with barely a glance but nobody and nothing messed with Dorothy and no evil disease would stop her.

She fought it. she fought it hard. The fight was bloody and dirty and shit and evil and sometimes funny, always poignant. We would sit with tears rolling down our faces as she would tell of the madness of life as your memory erodes behind your eyes. Once Blanefield had a couple of rooms ready, she moved in. The flats were sold and work progressed sporadically. She started taking paying guests in and the number of pets began to rise again, all strays. This included cats but not the little pussies that sit on your lap, Massive dog like creatures who would prey on young children who were foolish enough to wander away from the herd as they went to school in the morning. Dorothy referred to them as Norwegian forest cats but everyone knew they were dangerous mutants escaped from some government facility. She would pick up a half ton of spitting evil feline ferocity turn it over on it's back and tickle it till it turned into a love sponge. Everyone else just got permanent scarring, physical and pschological.

Things got bad and the Blanefield work stagnated, The paying guests she took in helped where they could but Dorothy was finding it hard to organise a cup of tea let alone repairs to a huge house. Her son now living in Aberdeen tried to help but it was too much and the house was eventually sold. A nice smaller property was purchased in a quiet area of Bearsden and Dorothy struggled on with her illness. Home helps were started, meals on wheels but things were getting worse. Soon the vultures were moving in and Dorothy became pray to conmen, Individual tradesmen and corporate crooks, everyone wanted a piece of her. Her house started to fill with strange objects, free gifts with only a small downpayment and newspapers and magazines began to collect in every corner. The newspapers were originally organised with articles on altzhiemers cut out and kept but eventually they just piled up, another task to be done when memory allowed.

Occasionally she would try on a new religion for size because faith can help cure things but when the Mormons came round preying on vulnerable people, somehow it was them to be found of a weekend doing Dorothies garden and paying her tythe for her. She wasn't as daft as she looked.

Freedom is independence and Dorothy as usual pushed it to the limit but eventually she had no choices left. The savagery that people do to the weak continued and after a particularily vicious crime on her, she agreed to move to Aberdeen where her son and his wife now lived with their first child. He worked in the oil industry and Dorothy moved into a small flat in the next street. Alone now except for her pets, her freinds were left behind in Glasgow. She still missed them but could not write letters or find the numbers to phone them and contact was lost. Still independent, still battling with illness and still determined to live her life her way. She lasted a year but in 1995 after she started her own small kitchen fire, she was finally persuaded to enter a nursing home.

Inchmarlo near Banchory is a wonderful place. Not one of those stinky little urine soaked decrepit and sad nursing homes that you find in every town but a big Pink castle in the luscious green banks of the Royal Deeside where as queen bee, she became known for her midnight parties. Bottles of Baillie’s missing from the bar would somehow turn up in her bin and her neighbours in the rooms next door would sleep in to midday and wake up with headaches. The grounds were wooded with ancient trees and stunning views. Dorothy soon came to see this place as her own home (literally, She occasionally asked who the hell all these other people were and what they were doing in her living room and perhaps we should make some tea for them....)

The fight went on. and over the next few years, the battle raged with Dorothy rarely giving an inch. On the outside she smiled and laughed but inside a war was going on. She began to lose memory of herself, She would bcome characters out of whatever TV show she had just watched. An inshore lifeboat man, An undercover policewoman patrolling Bachory village on the lookout for drug barons though as she told us, the guns are a bit heavy for me these days. Tony Blair phoned her up and asked her to join the cabinet which was nice. We asked if she meant the wardrobe but she gave us a look and said dont be silly dear.

She lost memory of her family 5 years ago and lost the ability to speak 3 years ago except when someone died in the home and Dorothy would speak away to them for hours freaking the hell out of the nurses. (She has always been a bit witchy poo, It's her family curse, tea leaves and Tarot cards always ready to point someone in the right direction)

Dorothy has been pretty much catatonic since mid 2007 her eyes were open but only rarely did someone peek out. her fight went on. Nobody messes with Dorothy she sets the rules. I was informed that she had another stroke in late March. They upped her morphine to the max allowable and I was told that she would not live more than 24 hours. She lasted till late May. she's a bugger for not doing what she is supposed to. It's another family trait. Dorothy died at midnight of May the 23rd 2008. The last fight over. The story ended. I felt the story had to be told but I know so little. There is a much bigger story there. A life so full that a mere book could not hold it but only she could give the words full justice and only she new the detail and alas, all that was lost to us and to her many years ago.

Please please don’t read this as a story of sadness or regret. No floating sorrow here. This is a story of incredible power, of beauty and strength and integrity. A life more full, more joyous than anyone I know. I, her son, may always live in that shadow but it has protected me and grown me into this wondrous madman that I am too. Her spirit has seeped deep into my soul. She taught me the difference between being morally right and legally right. She taught me the difference a tiny kindness or a simple hand of friendship can make. What more could any mother do for her child than that. Pray god that I can impart but a fraction of her gifts to mine own.

She always wanted to believe that reincarnation was possible, that we could have a second go. But in her heart of hearts she knew that we only get one chance and we had better make the most of it. Starting today.........

Please lift a glass
the toast is Dorothy my Mom...