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...
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...
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