As I remember it, Christmas 1965 was a rather fleeting time because
Jan had now become an employee subject to rosters; being one of the newer
employees, she was down the hierarchy a bit in terms of taking leave.
So we travelled down to Westgate on Christmas Eve on our blue Vespa,
with a case full of clothes and carefully wrapped loot for the families. It was
freezing, and although we were both dressed as warmly as we could, we did not
have leathers to fend off the chill; we were ‘mods’ rather than ‘rockers’. We
did have woollen gloves inside sheepskin gloves, and Jan had taken the
precaution of wearing thick tights under her ski trousers, and tucked herself
in tightly behind me. But we froze. I know that when we arrived in Kent having
negotiated the road out through Blackheath, the newly completed M2, and then
the Thanet Way, the day was fading, and we were immensely relieved to reach
dear old Westgate-on-Sea in its seaside town winter emptiness.
As it must be for all newlyweds, it was complicated having to
satisfy two families. My recollection is that we stayed at Kingsmead Court with
Jan’s family and its extensions, and that Christmas Day was shared with my
parents and Andrea coming for Christmas lunch and the afternoon. On Boxing Day
we went to my old family home, now re-occupied by Ted and Eve and Andrea after
their return from Australia. We certainly have black and white photos of a
delightful day showing us all in smart clothes and silly hats, standing around
a Christmas tree as tall as the room, and stacked with more presents. We look
happy, and I am sure we were. I was delighted to have my family back again, and
reachable. The three years of absence in Australia had made me self-reliant,
and that was never to change. But it is important for all of us to have that
readily accessible emotional connection, and the potential for support if it is
needed.
Having said that, at that time my side of the family were in many ways very
different to Jan’s side. The vast majority of the Martin side of the family
migrated to either Australia or to America in the years after the Second World War.
As I noted in an earlier chapter, my mother’s side of the family (the Mays) have
been a bit thin on the ground. Her paternal grandmother Charlotte (May, née
Hirst) had died in January 1923 (aged 55), when my mother was only 4, and only
two years after her own father Harold (aged only 26 in 1921) had died from
tuberculosis after being gassed in the First World War. The other grandmother
(Hannah, née Howie) died in 1924 (aged 69). These three deaths must have left
my grandmother (Louisa née Barrett, then in her 30s) reeling, grieving very much on her
own while trying to survive with two small children. Life must have been
emotionally very hard, as well as stressful with little income except that from
her war pension and her dressmaking. Her father (John Henry Barrett) was to die
in her house in Feltham in July 1938, when my own mother was 18. Then Grandad
May had an argument with a London trolley-bus in 1941, and died from his
injuries. Admittedly, both were in their 80s, but Louie must have felt
surrounded by death with so many over those twenty years.
Louie had developed a close supportive relationship with an aunt Emma
(born in 1864), who lived in Twickenham, looking after her tobacconist father
Thomas until his death in 1912. But travel was sometimes hard on public
transport, and the correspondence between the two reflects Louie’s somewhat
desperate need for closer support.
Admittedly there were supports. There was an
uncle Ernest, younger brother to her father Harold, and a City of London
policeman. He and his wife May had two daughters born in 1925 (Barbara) and 1928 (Dorothy). They lived in Feltham, and became close. Uncle Ernie was
to become the family patriarch, a role he filled vey well. Eve’s brother Harold
(born a month after their father had died) was later married to Ruth, and they had
a son, Brian, born in 1947, also living in Feltham. Even so, I sense the ongoing sadness that
permeated the extended family, and this filtered down to my mother, and was amplified
when her own mother died in 1945. Eve was not aloof, but despite her apparent
gregarious nature in company, she was always a loner with few close friends, and
sometimes a bit distant. Even when at her happiest, there was a self-protecting
wistfulness. And her happiest was when she was painting or sculpting, somewhat
solitary pursuits.
So Christmas 1965 was special, but even after
our 1963 trip to stay to with my family in Adelaide, the relationships were
never overly close, always a little reserved. On the one hand Jan and I were
respected for developing professional careers and doing well at University
(something both of my parents would have wished for themselves), but we were
expected to live our own lives. That was fine but I always felt slightly guilty
in having such a relaxed and comfortable relationship with Jan’s family. I
guess at the time, there had been fewer deaths in their families of origin, they were consistently light-hearted, and
their lifestyle as hoteliers reflected a naturally gregarious nature.
The difference in styles of our two families shows
in several ways. When Jan’s parents were not running the hotel in what passed
for summer in Kent, they were always looking for opportunities to get together
with family, or spend a couple of weeks on holiday. In my teens, I was
privileged over the years to join them in North Wales on one occasion, and the Lake
District on another. I was always made to feel welcome as a part of their
family. In addition there were two skiing trips – one when I was only 14,
another when 16. The latter was a ten-day gathering of extended Hughes family
in Saas Fee in Switzerland. Sadly, my own family never took the opportunity to
go anywhere for holidays. I guess money was always an issue, but I suspect a
‘home body’ attitude was also in play.
Another example is an episode that occurred
in about March 1966, when Jan and I had been married nearly a year. I had to do
a month of intensive midwifery training, and allocations to various units were
made without consultation or redress. You were placed, and expected to perform
for the month. That is you had to be an active part of at least 20 births,
attested to by a supervisor midwife. I was allocated to Derriford Hospital a large
teaching hospital in Plymouth, in
Devon. So, fairly recently married, I was going to be forcibly separated from
my life mate. I found this irksome and irritating, but just accepted it was
something I had to do, in that somewhat blind male way of my extended family not
really considering it might have major implications for Jan. She fretted,
despite frequent phone calls and the odd letter.
If my family had had to deal with that, I
suspect my father would have said something like “Well, you just have to get on
with. It will be over soon enough”. Jan’s family reacted in a totally different
way. Admittedly they were free to travel given it was pre summer season for the
hotel. But they arranged to bring Jan down to Plymouth for a week, and make it
one of their active holidays. She managed to get some time off from work, and
we were both thrilled about connecting. Unfortunately, it went slightly awry.
Jan caught some virus, was not well for most of the week, and then had one of
her extended migraines. She was happy to be there, but not very happy. In
addition, I was on call for births. As we all know, babies decide their own
time, so the time Jan and I had together was disrupted a couple of times. Life
is like that.
There was one quirky event that happened in
Plymouth at the Royal Hotel where the family were staying and we were having
lunch. Behind us there was a table with a rather large and somewhat elderly
woman holding forth. She had a strong Australian accent, and Jan and I looked
at each other bemused, remembering our own time in Australia. After lunch we
went over to introduce ourselves, and talk about our experiences in Adelaide. We
ended up sharing afternoon tea. Turns out the lady had been living in the
street next to the one in Adelaide where we were housed for our three months. And
she knew the Davidsons, in half of whose house we had been living. Life is
strange like that with coincidences in time and links made around the world; if
you are open to them. And you wonder whether there was some reinforcement of
our enjoyment in Adelaide as a city, given what we now know about our future.
But those are stories to come.
While the majority of you will understand
immediately why I have taken time to explore these matters, I know that some
may be asking: “What has all this go to do with learning to become a Child
Psychiatrist?” The first thing to say is that, while death is a universal fact
of life, grief affects us all in different ways. I believe as a doctor I have
had to work with grieving people all my professional career. Not only have I
had to come to terms with my own losses, but also I have had to learn how to
help others manage loss and grief and make some sort of recovery so that it did
not continue to have an impact on both their emotional and physical health.
More than that, I believe I have made a partial case for how grief may shape a
family style of living in the world. As a general practitioner I always thought
of myself as a ‘family doctor’, needing to be able to work fairly with all members
of a family. As a Child Psychiatrist, I have always thought of myself as a
child and family therapist. My hope is that this will become amply demonstrated
as this narrative unfolds.
