Margaret in The View from the Terrace

I hadn’t planned another entry today but I just turned on Facebook and learned that today would have been the 80th birthday of an old friend. I wrote about the passing of her husband, Jim, in my diary about 18 months ago. Her name was Margaret and I first met her when I was 11 and she 21. They were more my parents friends then. They used to lodge with my great aunt who lived over the road from our pub. Then, when Auntie died she left her house to Dad because she had no children of her own, and Margaret and Jim bought the house from Dad.

Margaret was from Plymouth, a long way from home, and she became like a surragate daughter to Mum. She went through some tough times. In the first 6 years of her marriage she had 2 miscarriages and 2 babies who died within a few hours of birth. She had a problem with her womb which meant she couldn’t carry them to term. Ironically just a few years later medical science found a way to deal with that, too late for Margaret.

Eventually she and Jim adopted a baby and moved back to Plymouth and over the years we have visited them there many times. I went to see Margaret after I had my miscarriage. On other, happier times we spent a week there and they showed us Devon and Cornwall. I remember one particular time when we went to Looe and Margaret packed a picnic. I was expecting a few sandwiches and maybe cakes but she had packed plates and cutlery, a salad meal and a lovely sweet.

She had always had problems with her kidneys and it caught up with her in her 50s. She was on dialysis the last time we visited. She told me she had decided to have a transplant, she was nervous about it but said she would do it because she wanted to hold her grandchildren. Sadly she never did as she died from complications after the operation. Her grandson was born a year or two later.

Jim emigrated to Australia to join his sister and her family. There he remarried and had twins. Their adopted daughter Jeanette followed a few years later with her family. It was she who posted her mother’s birthday on Facebook.

I will think about you today Margaret, you were a good friend.