A Funeral for my Mother

Sally Case

On Thursday 16 July 2015, we held a funeral for my mother at Bramcote Crematorium, Nottingham. We were given the 45 minute slot from 10:30, which allowed us just over half an hour to do what we needed. The funeral direction was respectful and dignified. There were flowers. A small congregation assembled. I led the cortege into the chapel, some piano music from Einaudi being played over the public address system.
The coffin containing my mother's remains was placed on the catafalque, along with a tasteful floral tribute. This was the closest I had been to my mother in over thirty years. I gave an oration in place of a eulogy. My brother said a few words. All too soon my brother signalled the closing of the catafalque curtains, and we processed out of the chapel to my choice of In Paradisum from Fauré's Requiem. We greeted and thanked the mourners, and invited them to join us at a local public house, although only two did. It was over. The life of a person was packaged and dispatched in 45 minutes.

What follows here is the oration I delivered, but with the addition of music, photographs and text [in red] of elements that would have made the funeral much richer, albeit a good deal longer. A simple funeral programme, illustrated with the photograph above, gave some of the readings below.

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[Einaudi piano music: Le Onde]

[Cortege enters chapel]

My name is Peter Hughes. I am one of Sally’s two sons. My brother, Carl, is also with us. I regret that Sally’s two daughters, Lisa and Rachel, are unable to be here in person. [I am grateful] to my two sisters, Lisa and Rachel, and to my brother, Carl, for helping me to construct the following account of the first 45 years of Sally’s life, [and for helping me to piece together something of the ensuing thirty years.]

I should like to begin by thanking you for coming here today. The purpose of our gathering is to pay our last respects to the person most of you will know as Sally Case, to say our good-byes, and to remember her life.

This is a time of transition, certainly for those us who knew Sally, and, depending on your beliefs, for Sally herself. Some of our tasks are to accept the reality of Sally’s death; to acknowledge our feelings about Sally, and the fact that she is no longer with us; to make appropriate adjustments to our lives in the light of her death; and to find ways to incorporate our memories of Sally into our ongoing life. Whilst the intention of this address is to help us all today with the latter of these tasks, trying to make sense of her life, I have little doubt that I shall be engaged on some of the tasks for the rest of my life.

Although the Sally I knew believed in ghosts and disembodied spirits, she was neither a formally- nor a piously-religious person, nor were most of the people in her life, so a religious funeral would seem quite out of place. It is not the place of this short funeral to challenge your spiritual beliefs. If you believe that something of a person survives their death, then Sally might have agreed with you. If you believe in past-lives, I doubt that Sally would have disagreed. I think that she might even have flirted with ideas of re-incarnation, but I am not sure. Whatever your beliefs, they mean something to you, so hold onto them. For what it is worth, I am an existentialist by disposition, a Quaker by convincement, and a lifelong atheist.

The structure of this funeral service will be simple. I have prepared an address that I shall read out. After which there will be a short period of silence for quiet reflection, or prayer, if that is your thing. My brother Carl has a few things he wishes to say. After a further brief period of silent reflection, we shall leave the chapel. It is our intention to meet at the Admiral Rodney public house after the service where it might be nice to spend a little while talking with you in a more convivial atmosphere.

Ecclesiastes chapter 3, verses 1 to 8:

To everything there is a season,
    a time for every purpose under heaven:

2     a time to be born, and a time to die;
    a time to plant, and a time to uproot what is planted;
3     a time to kill, and a time to heal;
    a time to break down, and a time to build up;
4     a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
    a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
5     a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones;
    a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
6     a time to gain, and a time to lose;
    a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
7     a time to tear, and a time to sew;
    a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
8     a time to love, and a time to hate;
    a time of war, and a time of peace.

Let us begin by spending a few minutes in silence, reflecting on the purposes and meanings we give to our life and to the lives of others around us; and also to our memories of Sally.

[Five minutes of silence]

Sally Cooper: 1939-2015

Sally was born on 8 February 1939, the only child of Harold Hawkes-Cooper and Dora Bilton. Her parents were never married to each other. Her father, Harold, had never formally divorced from a previous marriage from which he had a son and a daughter, although by the time Sally was on the way, Harold’s son, Dennis,  had emigrated to Australia, and his daughter, Amber, had been adopted. It was only later in her life that Sally chose to mention that she had a half-sister whom she had never known. Harold had led quite a colourful life which included a failed attempt at relocating to the USA when he was 21, owning a plant nursery in Sussex, a plant-hunting expedition to Malaysia, a failed attempt to relocate to Argentina, and working as a keeper at London Zoo. He was declared bankrupt at least once. Other Cooper Victorian forebears were stockbrokers and vicars, and one married the daughter of a Maori chief.

Despite her parents not being married to each other, Sally’s surname was recorded as Cooper on her birth certificate. She had no middle name, although I remember Sally occasionally telling people, with some humour, that a dental practice she attended insisted on Sally having a middle initial B. When she married my father, John, she gave her maiden name as Bilton. The Bilton family history was steeped in stolid Methodism with many of Dora’s direct family and ancestors being ministers. Dora had struck out from home in the 1920s and worked as private secretary to Walter Ayles, a Labour MP for Bristol North.

from Pinkle Purr by A.A. Milne

Tattoo was the mother of Pinkle Purr,
A little black nothing of feet and fur;
And by-and-by, when his eyes came through,
He saw his mother, the big Tattoo.
And all that he learned he learned from her.
'I'll ask my mother,' says Pinkle Purr.

Tattoo was the mother of Pinkle Purr,
A ridiculous kitten with silky fur.
And little black Pinkle grew and grew
Till he got as big as the big Tattoo.
And all that he did he did with her.
'Two friends together,' says Pinkle Purr.

War having been declared against Germany little more than six months after her birth, Sally entered the world in turbulent and uncertain times. It could be said that she lived her entire life as though needing the drama and chiaroscuro of those first embattled years. Sally was born in the bustling Sussex seaside town of Hove. The family soon moved away to the safety and loneliness of Anglesey. Sally’s parents worked ‘in service’ to Lord Boston, Dora working in the house, Harold as a gardener, chauffeur and master of the hounds. It may have been here that Sally acquired an early familiarity with garden plants that stayed with her throughout her life. However, it may also have been the experience of her parents working ‘in service’ that engendered a tension within Sally. Both her parents were from respectable middle-class families, and on her father’s side, albeit a long time in the past, there had been fabulous wealth. Just as the humble Tess Durbeyfield was seduced by the noble background of her D’Urberville forebears, Sally was never content to see herself as the daughter of impoverished parents working ‘below stairs’, and derived much satisfaction from associating with wealthy, high status people, yet paradoxically she also found middle-class values, such as deferred gratification and the importance of education, difficult to accept.

After the Second World War the family moved back to London. Tragedy must have loomed increasingly darkly for several years as her father increasingly manifested the symptoms of Parkinsonism. He died when Sally was only 14 years old, a loss she never forgot, and perhaps from which she never fully recovered. However, her middle teenage years were also heady times, for they coincided with the cultural emergence of the teenager. Sally revelled in the popular music of the 1950s, including rock-and-roll, and the songs of Frank Sinatra and Shirley Bassey. She worked as an usherette in a cinema and fell in love with the movies, especially musicals, watching High Society scores of times. I remember that she liked the song Moon River, sung by Audrey Hepburn in the movie Breakfast at Tiffany’s. 

[Moon River, Audrey Hepburn]

She also associated with a motor-cycle gang in north London, and later told stories about how she would roar off on the back of a bike at great speed into the night. Sometime in 1956, a Jewish friend, David Bernard, introduced Sally to a friend of his girlfriend, Marion. David and Marion later married. The friend-of-a-friend was John Hughes.

[Peggy Sue, Buddy Holly]

John had recently been discharged from National Service in the Royal Marines. He had been stationed in Cyprus where a terrorist group were fighting for independence. To Sally, this sounded excitingly masculine. However, John was not a tearaway: he was steady and thoughtful. Like Sally, he came from a family whose forebears had seen better times. Like Sally, John’s parents were not married to each other. Like Sally, John no longer had a father, although John’s father was still alive, just in another relationship that excluded John. I was the inevitable result of the too-swift romance, and was born the following year, Sally a mere 18 years of age. However, unlike their respective parents, John and Sally decided to marry, in a London registry office.

They found themselves a bedsit (a studio apartment as it would now be called) in Palmer’s Green, north London. To accompany the bawling infant they acquired a small dog. I do not know if Sally had lived with pets until that point, but subsequently she rarely lived without a dog, or sometimes a cat. Indeed, her rescue dog, Anna, survives her now.

John Hughes on his wedding day

At the same time that John Osborne was enjoying Broadway success with Look Back in Anger, a play that places angry young people in dingy flats in post-war Britain, it is hard to imagine that John and Sally were especially contented with the stark realities of their new life. Within a few months, my brother Carl was on the way, and John and Sally moved back into John’s mother’s house in Dollis Hill, Willesden, north west London. This move caused considerable rancour between John and his brother, Mike, precipitating what would become a family rift that healed only on John’s death in 1992.

At the turn of the twentieth century, Dollis Hill was a pleasant, prosperous and highly-desirable London suburb. However, like John and Sally’s forebears, it had declined in status, and had become cheap enough for poor Irish immigrant families to make their home, along with people who had sailed into Britain on the Windrush. I remember Sally’s friend, Renate, a German woman living alone in a bedsit just up the road: only 15 years after the end of the Second World War, German people were still commonly viewed with suspicion. Sally would occasionally come out with Yiddish (German Jewish) phrases, and make lokshen pudding, a simple, traditional Yiddish dairy noodle pudding. Sally, Carl and I would also spend time round at the Bernard’s house. In other words, Sally was comfortable mixing with people of various cultures and nationalities. I should also add that a man called Henry, a friend of my father, would come round to the house sometimes, or we would visit him. I now recognise that Henry was gay, an orientation that troubled neither of my parents, years before being gay was decriminalised.

[Fly Me To The Moon, Frank Sinatra]

It can’t have been easy for Sally living in the same house as her mother-in-law. Moreover, John, who attended evening classes to improve his education so that he could get a better job, proved to be too steady for Sally, too reliable, too unexciting. So in 1962, Sally left us and went to live with another man, and then at the end of the summer decided to return. I still remember the reconciliation meeting because it was the first occasion on which I was permitted to taste the fizzy drink Seven Up, such are the memories of children.

John was a man of principle and conviction, and lost his job more than once in those early years, so we never had much money. I think that the family was seriously poor. For example, it was not until 1966 that we first had a television, and only at the end of the 1960s that a telephone was installed. On Sundays we would often visit Sally’s mother, Dora, and her partner Maurice, who now lived in Aylesbury where Dora was the daily cleaner at the family home of the Weatherheads, a well-to-do family who owned the famous bookshop in the town. Dora also played the piano for a children’s ballet class. Sally never found it easy to get on with her mother. On a lighter note, John and Sally would occasionally take my brother and me on a picnic to Chorleywood Common, or to Kew Gardens, in Richmond, Surrey. Mostly, however, Sally would simply take us for a walk in nearby Gladstone Park. Occasionally we would visit an art gallery or museum together, and Sally retained a lifelong interest in representational painting, her final house being lavishly adorned with paintings, prints and photographs.

[Habanera, from Bizet's Carmen]

It must have been very difficult for Sally to make ends meet on so little money, for not only was she still young, but during the time that I knew her, budgeting never emerged as one of her strong points. John and Sally had many rows, mostly about the lack of money, and these rows continued throughout their marriage.  In London, Sally did part-time shop work, to which she returned a few years later. By the 1970s she had worked as a cook in a school, which still makes me shudder because her cooking skills were often rudimentary, and as an office cleaner, a school cleaner, a ‘daily’ home cleaner (like her mother), and a private gardener. The only job about which she ever talked with real affection was having worked as an usherette.

Sally and John's house in Dunstable

Sally and John were given a new start in 1964 when John finally landed a half-decent job in Luton, north of London. Accompanied by the surviving pet cat of two, the four of us relocated to [a rented semi-detached house in] nearby Dunstable, Bedfordshire. Sally bought a pedigree Irish setter she named Kerry, and a third child was decided upon. Kerry was delightful, but highly excitable, untrained and as poorly behaved as all the subsequent pet dogs, including border collies, a basset hound, a Pyrenean -cross and a black labrador. Sally soon struck up a friendship with a neighbour, Mary Chapman, and the two remained in periodic contact for the rest of Sally’s life. Sally also took to visiting a friend of her mother, called Tess Vevers. Tess was the wife of Geoffrey Vevers, a significant London socialist, long-time Superintendent at London Zoo, the person who set up Whipsnade Zoo, not far from Dunstable, mentor to Gerald Durrell, and erstwhile colleague of Sally’s father. Tess and Geoffrey lived in a house they built in the zoo, muntjac deer nibbling the flower beds and wallabies on the lawn. Sally had previously taken Carl and me to Regent’s Park Zoo in London, and she took us all to Chester Zoo on many occasions. I think that Sally may have been attracted to the romance of wild beasts collected from foreign parts. Sadly, John’s job did not last, and we were soon on the move again. Just before we left Dunstable, Lisa, Sally’s first daughter, was born.

After a brief but uncomfortable interlude back at John’s mother’s house, the five of us, plus cat and dog, moved to Chester, Cheshire. John had secured a job in a desolate industrial nightmare called Widnes , then Lancashire, now Cheshire. However, for the first time, certainly since her father’s death, perhaps in her entire life, Sally was living in a house in which she was not a tenant. Moreover, although small, it was detached and had gardens at both front and back. Sally considered that, at last, she was moving up in the world. Although not a natural gardener, she took an interest in growing flowers, and had a particular fondness for gladioli and Michaelmas daisies. With considerable labouring support from her family, the two gardens gradually took shape. Sally soon showed a preference for flower arranging over maintaining a large garden, but I was interested to see that, in her final house, she had turned a dingy back yard into a delightful green oasis.

Sally and John's house in Chester

Chester is a provincial town, where things tend to remain the same. Sally was not a provincial person, content with her lot, enjoying quiet relationships. She preferred intense relationships, and racier, cosmopolitan city life. No doubt feeling constrained, at the beginning of the 1970s Sally decided to learn to drive a car. Although petrol was then very much cheaper in real terms than it is now, the cost of buying and running a car was not really an affordable option, but as she had a little income from her part-time jobs Sally felt determined. Sally was not a natural driver, but she persevered. Once she had passed her driving test, Sally was determined to get out and explore North Wales, and she often took her four children and pet dog, but rarely John, to places such as Moel Famau. She also loved visiting formal gardens, such as those belonging to stately homes. Over the years, although forever constrained by poor personal finances, Sally’s taste for adventure included trips to the Netherlands, France, Portugal, and in 2011 on an Atlantic Coast cruise and in 2014 on a Nordic cruise.

Sally (right) with a friend on board a cruise ship

Sally on board a cruise ship

Ithaka by Constantine Kavafy

As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbours you’re seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind -
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you’re destined for.
But don’t hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you’re old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvellous journey.
Without her you wouldn't have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,

you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

On relocating to Chester, Sally not only had her hands full with two young sons and a baby daughter, but she was also completely removed her from any possibility of support by her mother, mother-in-law or friends, all of whom lived in or not far from London. Not having any siblings, nor experienced many childhood friends, Sally was a long way out of her depth as a mother. As a consequence, I had already manifested some quite troubled behaviour that ought to have rung alarm bells. This dislocation of Sally’s support had several serious consequences for her. Wisely, she started to grow a new support network, first through the Young Wives group of the local Anglican parish church (although her religious faith, such as it was, was very far from conventional), and subsequently through parents’ groups at the schools attended by me and my siblings. This is how she came to meet Margaret Townsend, who became a regular ‘listening ear’, a role taken over and continued by Margaret’s husband, Geoffrey, when Margaret died some years ago; and Joan Flood, with whom Sally also remained in contact. Second, Sally was prescribed tranquilisers that she continued to take for many years. Third, to add to her near-lifelong addiction to nicotine, Sally began drinking spirits more regularly and more heavily. Fourth, in 1968 she attempted to revive a past romantic relationship in north London, a choice that created additional tension with John. Fifth, Sally made several serious attempts to end her life. Clearly, the picture I am painting is of a troubled and unhappy woman. I am unclear why her unhappiness was not medically diagnosed as a condition that required a good deal more attention.

The arrival of my second sister, Rachel, in 1971, was unexpected, and although a joy to us all, placed the family finances under additional strain. John took a second, evening job, in a bar, distancing him further from the family. Sally also expressed considerable discomfort about the top-up fees being paid to educate three of her children in semi-independent schools. Things went from bad to worse when John was made redundant in 1975. Sally’s family life began to fragment.

Sally and John's house in St. Albans

As before, when things were bad, a relocation and new start were proposed, this time back in south east England. John managed to secure a job in Palmer’s Green, and together John and Sally bought a house in St. Albans, Hertfordshire in 1976. However, this was to be their last house together, and by 1979 they were divorced. Sally was already in another relationship when she bought a house in Garston, a suburb of Watford, Hertfordshire the following year. Rod Case was an ambulance driver, not a pen-pusher, and a hard drinker. His fluctuations in mood and temper matched those of Sally. For reasons that I do not understand she respected his aggression and occasional violence. They [relocated to Nottinghamshire in the 1980s, and] married in 1995, and Sally remained with Rod until his death in 2006.

Sally and Rod Case on their wedding day

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the tension within Sally was always present: feeling pulled between a need for drama in her relationships against the need for stability. When life became too ‘dramatic’ with Rod, Sally would seek solace with her friend Collin Dennison who was a much quieter person, and of whom, I am informed, Sally was extremely fond for 35 years. Collin sadly died at the start of June this year, an event that may have propelled Sally even further into drowning herself in bottles of vodka, an assault with which her internal organs were unable to cope. [Sally died on the morning of Tuesday 30 June 2015 with Tony and Andy at her hospital bedside.] 

from Macbeth by William Shakespeare

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

For me, the elephant in the room is that over a period of years, three of Sally’s children, including me, chose to sever all contact with her. Few people who experienced Sally will be in any doubt that she was a person with whom it was challenging to remain in relationship. Indeed, it was always Sally who challenged the relationship. For sure she could be charming, but there was frequently a sting in the tail. Decades of working as a therapeutic counsellor convinces me that, from the onset of her adult life, Sally ought to have been diagnosed with, and treated for, borderline personality disorder. Had she received the right treatment, I believe that Sally’s life could have been less tortured for her and less of a trial for others. The drama and tragedy of her life did often elicit some of the best in other people, acting out of compassion for her. I am especially grateful that several people, both around Nottingham, particularly Tony Nelson and Andy, but also Beryl, Steve and Carol, plus some further afield, have felt able to support Sally over these many years when I have been unable to do so. Despite living the best part of a thousand miles away, my brother Carl, and his family, maintained an unbroken link with Sally, whereas I could not.

Sally with a friend

Sally was a person I shall remember as having an appetite for drama, whether on the movie screen or in real life. For all that her words were often mired in clay, she was also a romantic, loving musicals and happy endings. Much like any girl of 14, standing on the threshold of life, it is as though Sally felt pulled in two directions. On the one hand she was attracted to drama and adventure, but found the dramatic and adventurous emotionally demanding, and it was hard for her to cope with the consequences; on the other hand she yearned for the safety and security of an idealised family life, but found it equally difficult to cope with the prosaic reality.

Sally with unknown infant

There are several short but meaningful passages in the funeral programme. I should like to close with one of them: Water-lilies by A.A. Milne. It was a personal favourite of Sally Cooper, the girl.

Water-lilies by A.A. Milne

Where the water-lilies go
To and fro,
Rocking in the ripples of the water,
Lazy on a leaf lies the Lake King's daughter,
And the faint winds shake her.
Who will come and take her?
I will! I will!
Keep still! Keep still!
Sleeping on a leaf lies the Lake King's daughter. . . .
Then the wind comes skipping
To the lilies on the water;
And the kind winds wake her.
Now who will take her?
With a laugh she is slipping
Through the lilies on the water.
Wait! Wait!
Too late, too late!
Only the water-lilies go
To and fro,
Dipping, dipping,
To the ripples of the water.

Let us now spend a few minutes in silence, remembering the life of Sally in the context of what we have heard, and reflecting on the meanings we give to her life and how she lived it. If you pray, this could also be a time when you might wish to do so.

[Five minutes of silence]

My brother Carl wishes to say a few words ...

...

The funeral closed with In Paradisum, from Fauré's Requiem.