Chapter 17: How the mighty have fallen; (2 Samuel 1.19)

Illustration: The demolition of Wallsend Grammar School in 2014

Institutions don’t last forever, which is why I post this sad photograph of the demolition of Wallsend Grammar school in 2004. In 1969 the school became known as Burnside High School, later it became Burnside Community School, and then in 2004 Burnside Business and Enterprise College. Many tried hard to preserve this iconic landmark but failed, particularly one History teacher, whom we affectionately called ‘Little Rod'.

Only two columns survive and can be seen in the Hall Grounds of Richardson Dees Park, Wallsend.

So, at this point, I pause, from reminiscing about school life, as so many other things were going on at the time, but I will return to talk about the latter part of my time in sixth form.

Many of us will have had grandparents, who have been institutions too; permanent fixtures in our lives. We think they’ll always be there for us, but sadly that’s not the case, and it hits us hard.

When I was fifteen, my granda died. Apart from the demise of pets, this was the very first time death came calling at the family door.

Nana and Granda Abernethy were always there for us in life, and we did have some laughs in their company and Joan and I have vivid memories of them both.

We remember having a game of American Joker with nana once, and when she went out of the room, we fixed her hand of cards, so it was full of two’s and jokers.

We sat and watched her face as she returned and opened her cards.

We had to stifle our laughter as we watched her breaking into a grin, and then we all broke into uncontrollable laughter. At this, her false teeth flew out and landed on the table. We were all in hysterics, and began crying with laughter!

On the subject of teeth, I also remember, as a young child, nana, accidentally, revealing the truth to us, concerning the tooth fairy.

One night when we went to bed at her house, I covered my extracted tooth with salt, and placed it on the window sill, fully expecting there to be a coin there the next day. When we got up the next morning, the tooth was still in place, and still covered with salt. When I mentioned this nana, she said, without thinking, “Oh damn I forgot!”

I laugh about it now, but when a child learns the ‘truth’ in such a way, it can do irreparable harm to the human psyche!

I dreaded having to accompany her on her trips to the shops, as she would talk to every single person enroute; she seemed to know just about everyone.

Just as she said goodbye to one person, another would appear and hasten towards her at great speed, and I would groan inwardly because that would mean another half-hour added to our trip, at least. I would stand for ages on end, waiting for her to stop chatting and move on.

“What goes around, comes around!”  I'm just like her on a Sunday morning at church and even in a shopping centre!”

I don’t remember all that much about my granda, other than he was extremely deaf, not very tall and was bow-legged; he would sit in his favourite chair with his left ear to the wireless, and cup his hand up around it to hear his programmes more clearly, just like I do now! He didn’t say very much to anyone.

I drew a pencil portrait of his profile once, when I was about thirteen, and it was my very first close likeness, how I wish I still had it.

We would stay at their house every Wednesday night and we loved to watch the hilarious antics of about nine or ten children belonging to one family, who lived diagonally opposite, as they tussled with each other, climbed curtains, and hung out of windows, totally unsupervised at bedtime. I also remember the time a hot water bottle we were supposed to share, split open, and all the water poured out. We had to shout for nana, as we didn’t want to sleep in a wet bed for the rest of the night. She was furious that her feather mattress was soaked through, it had to be stripped and turned over.

We had never ever heard her raise her voice before; but all saints have their moments!

She really looked after us as we grew, particularly at lunchtimes and tea times, until my mother got back in from work to collect us and walk us home down the gasworks bank.

I was almost fourteen when news travelled like lightning around the world that President JF Kennedy had been assassinated. His so-called assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was shot two days later. Had he indeed been a lone gunman, or was he merely, as he himself claimed to be, a ‘patsy’, a fall guy? Lots of conspiracies arose from then on.

The president’s death touched many hearts, as he was such a popular figure, and a familiar face on our televisions.

A year later, when I was fifteen, death raised its ugly head yet again.

Granda became ill, and the lounge downstairs was turned into a bedroom, to save my nana going up and downstairs so many times to tend to him.

One day he began seeing dirty marks on the opposite wall, and it disturbed him as he lay in that downstairs bed. We tried to convince him there was absolutely nothing there, the wall was clean, but he was having none of it.

Even when the Methodist minister visited their home, my granda kept on complaining about the dirty marks on the wall. We were apologetic, but the minister simply got up, took his chair to the wall, and climbed onto it. He took out his handkerchief, and began cleaning the wall.

“Have the marks gone yet, Will?” he asked, as he began to clean them off the wall.

“No a bit more . . . to the right, “ I heard him say. “A bit more.”

“Is that it?” asked the minister.

“Yes they’ve gone!” replied my granda, and he never mentioned them again!

I remember kissing Granda’s face before we went home, the night before he died.

His face was extremely hot and sweaty, and we were told the next morning, that he had died.

This was very different territory for me, as I had never given much thought to death or dying, other than when our pets died, and the president was assassinated.

When you’re young you think you have many years ahead of you. You also think parents and grandparents will always be there. But now that my granda had died, I began asking myself what was all this about? Where had he gone to? And how soon would death come calling other members of my family, our parents, my sister, even me? And where would we be when we died?

These were questions that seemed to have no answers.

In those days, elderly women, matronly neighbours, would lay a body out, and stay with the chief mourner until the undertaker had arrived, and when we visited nana’s house, two local ladies were preparing to take their leave of her, having finished their tasks and commiserations for the day.

The undertaker had also been, and granda's body had been transferred upstairs and placed into a coffin.

One of these ladies asked if we wanted to see his body upstairs, and say ‘Goodbye” to him.

Well of course we did, this was our granda. Mind you, we had no idea what to expect, but as Joan and I went up the stairs, the same lady caught hold of my arm and said,

“Make sure you kiss him on the brow pet, then you’ll not dream about him, now he’s gone!”

What?

She was just like a character, straight out of a Dickens’ novel, like the one who found Mr Scrooge dead in bed and stole his curtains!

What a thing to say to an impressionable fifteen-year-old! It really disturbed me.

I realised eventually, that even if my granda had appeared to me in a dream, I would have enjoyed seeing him, and vice versa!

However, what she had said, compelled me to act in a way I might not have chosen to, had she not said it.

As we entered the room, there was a strong smell of Dettol, in a saucer on top of the fireplace? My granda didn’t look like himself anymore lying there; his face had changed dramatically. He was pale, waxen, jaundiced even, and his skin was almost transparent and wrinkle free.

We moved forward to 'kiss' him, as instructed.

What had been a hot sweaty face the night before, was now stone cold marble. I hadn’t expected that to meet my lips, and I was horrified.

From then on, on certain nights, I had terrors about dying, and the questions that had filled my mind, grew bigger. What actually happened when we died, where would we be? What would we do? I was genuinely scared.

I remember one night, sometime later, asking my dad to come and sit with me, when I was afraid to go to sleep, and he did his best to answer my death questions, but couldn’t provide all the answers.

 I recall him saying, “Right stop it now, you’re even frightening me! Close your eyes and think of something nice.”

And so he sat with me and stroked my hair, until I went off to sleep.

Why was I worrying so much, when my Christian faith taught me that my Granda was now in heaven with Jesus, whom he had loved and worshipped?

I was at a very impressionable age, my fear of death was now real though, and I wondered whether there really was life beyond death. A music teacher at the Grammar school, I can’t remember her name now, must have heard me talking about my granda, and she invited a few of us along to her Spiritualist church in Wallsend. (We called it then ‘The Spookies’) In my ignorance I went hoping my Granda might get in touch with me.

When I discussed this with my wonderful Sunday school teacher, Mr Chisholm, the following Sunday, he warned me against it most urgently. He told me that conjuring up the dead like the spiritualists did, brought death into a home, and anyway the Bible spoke against it. (1 Samuel 28, Leviticus 19.31, Deuteronomy 18.9-12)

I remember trying out a Ouija board with friends, but that was said to be of the occult. Many do search down these avenues, desperate for news of relatives that have gone before.

But I came to reason, if all this is NOT God’s Holy Spirit, then what kind of spirits are deceiving vulnerable people, and I chose to go no further down this route.

I’m so glad now I made that decision. I took Mr Chisholm’s advice. Many years on, I would come to have an experience of God’s ‘Holy’ Spirit but I’ll come to that later.