One For The Ditch

When I think of the people who have made a difference in my life and with whom I don’t share DNA, Pauline is definitely up there. She was my Mum’s best friend and one of the very few people I have known my entire life. This week I went to her funeral. This was written in the order of service. Often there are things written at funerals that are nice but, you know, not quite a perfect fit. In this case, however, these words were actually true.

Some people can’t help making a difference in our lives

By simply being who they are

They make the world a little brighter

A little warmer, a little gentler, 

And when they are gone, we realise how lucky

We were to have known them.

– Flavia Weedon

My Mum and Pauline became friends at work, having left school at 14. They were getting married and having children at an age that I was still listening to Tori Amos and writing terrible poetry. They had their first babies (one of them being my sister) within days of each other on the same maternity ward. My mum used to tell me that one night, Pauline, being large of bosom, was in so much pain that my Mum manually expressed her to relieve the pressure. It would take about 20 years for me to know what she was talking about but it became my bar for friendship – these things that women do for each other.

Because Pauline and my Mum taught me about friendship and what that looked like. Not just people to hang out with, but relationships that are the central core of our lives.

Pauline was a little bit cooler than my Mum, and just a little bit more daring. She had shorter hair, was blonde and I’m not sure I ever saw her wear a dress. In fact, I’m pretty sure she only ever wore black and white. That makes her sound harsh, but she had such wonderfully round smiling cheeks and was so eternally cheerful that, quite frankly, she needed the black to offset it.  She went running, and skiing at a time when my own Mum was still wrestling with pop mobility and Rosemary Conley workouts with baked bean tins. 

She was married to Roy, and the two of them drifted in and out of my childhood through parties and drinks. Roy was the one who told jokes that I had to be sent out of the room for. I’d try listening at the door for the punchline, but he’d be laughing so hard at his own joke that it was impossible to make out, even for the people in the room. My Dad was someone you’d say ‘didn’t suffer fools gladly’, so I had a special fondness for people who could make my Dad genuinely laugh.

When I was 14, Roy died suddenly on holiday. I’d known people who had died before, but not like this. Pauline was younger than I am now. His was the first funeral I went to and I can still see Pauline’s face. It was then I learnt that grief didn’t start with sadness, but a quiet devastation. 

I didn’t witness Pauline’s pain, but I knew that my Mum did.  I knew there were phone calls late at night and early in the morning and a quiet showing up day after day. And a protectiveness from my Dad that was very much his strength. She was part of the family and always included.

She also became my blueprint for finding a way forward. She was a doer (in a way that I am not). She became a painter and decorator and turned her house into a B&B. There she was, up at 6 every morning, cooking breakfast for strangers working away from home.

Because Pauline was a people person. Extroverts can sometimes be loud and obnoxious, Pauline was the opposite. You could see she got her energy from having other people around and was genuinely interested in them and their lives. She would literally talk to anyone. I used to cringe with embarrassment in restaurants, or anywhere really, where she would strike up a conversation with the staff or whoever was passing.

“Can you not just tell them your order and be done with it?” I would squirm, but no. Life’s better when you take an interest.

It was then I learnt that it really is the women that piece each other back together.  My Mum and Pauline, together with Eleanor and Pauline’s sister Pat became what my Dad would affectionately call ‘The Coven’ He would roll his eyes at me and say “all they ever do is laugh” and I wondered what he could possibly find wrong with that. But I also knew that laughing wasn’t all they did. The laughter was the reward for all the other heavy lifting, and I was often hanging around as a junior member, listening to stories about things I didn’t quite understand. The conversations were wide and varied and it always felt like a lot of work was done by the end of the night. It was like being initiated into a secret society, complete with complicity and protection – like the time Dad was away and I had ruined his leather jacket in the rain. Mum agreed not to tell him as long as I kept quiet about the 4 of them putting through the best part of a bottle of Grand Marnier. That’s the sisterhood for you. I don’t think any of them would have regarded themselves as feminists, very much the opposite in fact. But through them I learnt that women together are a remarkable force, to be feared and revered in equal measure.

Pauline was always open to new things. It was the 90s, and she had an interest in alternative therapies before they were popular. Acupuncture, homeopathy, crystals. Anything that might make life just a little bit better couldn’t hurt – the eternal optimist. My Dad and I would raise an eyebrow as she gave Mum Evening Primose Oil to help her menopausal memory, but she kept forgetting to take it. Dad would try and argue with her that it was all nonsense but she would remain steadfast, twirling her hand in front of her as she very patiently explained why he was wrong. There were few people who could do that. Long before I knew what an affirmation was, she persuaded my Mum to repeat in the mirror “every day, and in every way, I’m getting better and better.” I found this hilarious but now find myself muttering it in the shower.

Eight years after Roy, my Dad died, and it was my Mum’s turn to be held up. They knew the drill and turned up, day after day. He left money in his will for the four of them to go on a cruise because he also knew that they would be the ones she needed. They walked every week, went on holiday, day trips and drank wine, quite a lot of it. When my Dad was alive, they would both have a whisky before bed. My Mum vowed that she would not drink at home alone. But when the coven were together, the wine flowed freely, and the laughter gradually returned. “One for the ditch” was a regular refrain at the end of the night.

They turned up for me too. When I bought my flat in London, they all came down to clean it. Pauline told me a handy tip that if I put newspaper on the top of my kitchen cabinets, then I’d never need to clean them, I could just change the newspaper.

“I was just planning on not looking on the top of my kitchen cabinets?” and she laughed. 

She would turn up and decorate a room for me whilst Mum cleaned something, and they made regular trips for lunch, concerts and shows. 

A few years later, Mum was ill too. They carried on with their holidays and plans.  In those last weeks of her life, lots of people visited who we could have done without, but Pauline wasn’t one of them. She showed up every day, without drama or histrionics, to take the washing away, change the beds, and help Mum shower.  The sharp end of the breast milk pact.

I think about it now, losing your husband and your best friend and how many times you can have the rug pulled from under you.

For the next 20 years, I would randomly turn up on her doorstep and cry, soaking her ample bosom. She was one of the few people that I could wail to “I want my Mum” because I knew that she did too. Just like my Mum, I could always rely on her to be completely on my side, encouraging and reassuring in equal measure, but without my Mum’s added comments about the size of my thighs. She would also randomly turn up on my doorstep and paint something; Fred’s nursery, the landing on our rented house so we could get our deposit back.

What Pauline gave me, is best summed up in one of my favourite quotes from Jeanette Winterson.

“But as I try and understand how life works–and why some people cope better than others with adversity–I come back to something to do with saying yes to life, which is love of life, however inadequate, and love for the self, however found. Not in the me-first way that is the opposite of life and love, but with a salmon-like determination to swim upstream, however choppy upstream is, because this is your stream…”

Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal

It would have been easy for her to become bitter and cynical, but she has always been the opposite. It’s not a case of perkily looking on the bright side, or keeping cheerful, or any of the toxic positivity we are taught to be wary of. It is about choosing to see the good in people. Because it is a choice. She taught me unconditional positive regard long before I ever met a therapist. When others were being judgemental or scornful, she was the one defending them with compassion and understanding. I was always much more cynical, but now I see it more clearly. Seeing the best in people is a sign of strength, not weakness. It takes effort, and it takes hope.

So it’s true that ‘some people can’t help making a difference in our lives’ and Pauline has very much shaped mine. She gave me a model of friendship and kindness that I have carried with me, and showed me that love very often comes with a paint roller in its hand.