OPINION
4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, AUGUST 26, 2016
Packing toothbrush
and toaster, Mum
‘Brexits’ her home
Cluttered closets unveil
a dusty pathway to past
By PATRICK WEBB
For The Daily Astorian
T
hey say you cannot go home again.
It’s true. Next time, my key will not
it.
I am in England, moving Mum to an assist-
ed-living apartment and clearing out her house,
ready to sell it.
When she, Dad and my brother, aged 14
months, moved south from their native Lon-
don to the Surrey countryside in 1954, Queen
Elizabeth II had been
on the throne 448 days.
Rationing, imposed
during wartime, had
only just ended, Win-
ston Churchill was back
as prime minister and
a Briton had just run
the irst mile in under 4
minutes.
Their second son
showed up three years
Patrick
later and stayed 18 years
Webb
before beginning an
enjoyable career in newspapering that brought
him to the North Coast.
Today, we are saying goodbye to that home
I grew up in.
The good news is that Mum is happy to
move, excited even.
Macular degeneration is robbing her of
her eyesight. She cannot read, so she listens to
talking books. Television is indistinct; the for-
mer nimble tennis player heard rather than
watched Briton Andy Murray win Wimbledon
last month. She’s smart enough to realize that
it’s time to swap her three-bedroom duplex for
a ground-loor studio apartment and learn its
nooks and crannies in case her sight gets worse.
My Dad and my wife’s father, deteriorat-
ing mentally and physically, left their longtime
homes amid tearful pleading, creating stom-
ach-churning guilt that lingers four and eight
years later. Dad’s pathetic, withered frame
endured a disgusting, smelly nursing home
for just short of a full year, a sentence with no
remission for good conduct. It was a disgrace
to dignity. I had never embraced that “death-is-
a-relief” cliche until he died (on my wedding
anniversary, so it’s easy to remember).
This time, the patient is willing, the destina-
tion much brighter.
Half the size
Mum’s new home is half the size of a volley-
ball court, though it appears to have everything
she needs: a bathroom with sturdy safety rails in
the shower, a compact kitchen alcove with spa-
cious cupboards, her own front door and a glass
rear door that opens onto a patio.
Except for the very wealthy, assisted-living
facilities in England exist in rare public-private
partnerships. The rent is not exorbitant, but gov-
ernment rules require tenants to sell their homes.
Waiting lists are long, but Mum’s age and inir-
mity boosted her to priority status.
After she fell ill during my visit in March
(my cooking, perhaps?), Mum agreed to apply;
I mailed her documentation en route to Heath-
row Airport. Earlier this summer, our awk-
ward weekly phone conversations — which had
danced around the subject — morphed from
“if” to “when.” She realized she could no longer
cope alone in the large house, even though paid
caregivers visit her twice daily to ix light meals
and make sure she takes her medications.
After being approved, Mum inspected her
future home last month; the entire family held
its breath. “I’m thrilled with it,” she reported,
and kept saying the same phrase each time I
phoned. “I’m thrilled with it.”
It became so like a mantra that I began to
doubt. Did it signal that British “stiff upper-lip”
she earned during her late teens in a London
bomb shelter while the Luftwaffe repeatedly
tried to kill her? When I arrived to coordinate
her move earlier this month, the sparkle in her
manner conirmed she truly felt joy at the pros-
pect. She was embracing a new adventure — a
positive one; I could have cried.
A practical list
Ever practical, Mum honed her list and put
colored stickers on just eight pieces of furniture
for the movers — nine if you add the pendulum
wall clock her beloved brother Ollie had made.
Decades of accumulation were reduced to
necessities, from toothbrush and toaster. One
armchair to sit on, one for a guest. Bed, side
table and cupboard. Carefully wrapped were
a ceramic lamp Mum made in the 1970s and
a framed black-and-white photo of the man to
whom she was married for 65 years, Dad, look-
ing younger than I ever knew him.
On moving day, I pressed her still-warm
pajamas into a suitcase then lugged it down the
stairs and loaded it into my tiny rental car. The
trip to the next village was 2.6 miles, through
leafy lanes where I had ridden my bike and
delivered newspapers for two summers. As
we drove, I peeked sideways at my passenger,
but detected no tears. Being Mum, she knew
exactly what her son was checking on.
Younger friends from her lawn bowls club
live in three of the 40 units. Medically creden-
tialed staff are on hand 24/7, there’s cheery
lounge, a dining room for communal meals,
plus a laundry where residents reserve machines
in spindly cursive. Her room is bright, despite
tall trees which shade the patio, and there is a
bench handy to sit outside.
My job is to clear out what remains. Each
day, I take a break from separating treasures
from trash to share a meal or deliver some small
items, mostly kitchen implements, cleaning sup-
plies or plant pots.
At 5 foot 4 inches tall, with good wrists but
no upper-arm strength, I am not built to lift
heavy boxes or move anything larger than a din-
ing room chair. I never have been, and these
days my wobbly leg doesn’t help. I’m miscast
as the hands-on clearance site foreman, though
the paperwork and logistics are my forte. Had
I served in “M*A*S*H,” I would have been
Radar O’Reilly.
For a writer, this experience should be
memorable, bittersweet, a cause for relec-
tion, a life milestone, prompting clever words
or images. It’s not. Instead, it’s one chore after
another, dusty, dirty, wearing me out, taxing my
patience. Just when I think I have made prog-
ress, I ind something else that needs to be done,
then rip another ingernail or bark my shins.
Band-Aids adorn three limbs already.
A rush job
My deadline to ly back to the U.S. looms
and there is a $300 fee for changing my Air
Canada ticket if I stay longer. I must hurry.
It doesn’t help that the house is halfway up
a narrow cul-de-sac, so there’s no passing traf-
ic for impromptu yard sales of books, costume
jewelry or kitchenware. The day of Mum’s
move, the pantechnicon (that’s what Britons call
furniture vans) trapped neighbors for more than
an hour.
Climbing into the attic makes me cough and
sneeze. Even a mask doesn’t ilter out traces
of the iberglass insulation; two hours is all I
can manage at one time before nasty coughing
forces me to switch to lighter chores. Discarded
memories emerge amid the dust. An HO-gauge
electric train set brought joy to two brothers in
the 1960s; now, the locomotive wheels are too
rusted for any eBay proits. Dog-eared genea-
logical research papers compiled by Uncle Ollie
inadvertently conirmed a skeleton in the fam-
ily tree. They are crammed into two unfashion-
able blue suitcases; one rusty hinge lakes off
when I open it.
There are spare curtains, a couple of work-
ing irons and a toy truck, still in its original box,
to parcel out to relatives, neighbors and friends,
but most items are beyond salvage; cords on
most lamps and electric heaters are danger-
ously frayed. The helpful men at the munici-
pal dump, where inicky British recyclers would
make Oregon proud, grin when I drive up yet
another time in my rented hatchback. “You
again, Yank?” they tease, apparently hearing
something that’s infected my accent these past
36 years.
Some things cannot be dumped. A girl who
was taught dress design by Norman Hartnell
before he served regal clients, sewed a lifetime
of bright-patterned dresses from material scraps
called “remnants.” Now Mum’s creations —
“exclusive” is her word for these one-of-a-kind
designs — are being donated to thrift stores
that prosper in Britain’s depressed high streets
(three, for the Red Cross, a hospice and a skin
disease charity, coexist within 150 yards of her
new home).
But Mum is happy; the family seems happy.
I am exhausted, and trying to hide it.
Photos by Patrick Webb/For The Daily Astorian
May Webb of Surrey trims cuttings from a hydrangea for a friend as she prepares to
leave her home of 62 years. She recalls moving into the newly built house and digging
the bare yard in 1954, then planting potatoes to prepare the soil. Her new apartment
home is in an assisted-living facility in the adjoining village.
‘Mum is smart enough to realize that
it’s time to swap her duplex for a studio
apartment and learn its nooks and
crannies in case her sight gets worse.’
Favorite bears have played a key role in Webb family life. This bandana-wearing creature
is pictured with some of the other “finds” in the attic, including a James Bond-style cam-
era from a bygone era, still in its original box (2008 is the model number, not the year of
issue), a bottle of French wine, an old British prayer book with Veterans’ Day poppy, and a
label maker, which may be recognizable to people who grew up in the 1970s.
Cup of tea?
On one midafternoon break, I drive the
familiar 2.6 miles again. The millisecond I
arrive at Mum’s apartment, she plugs in her
new kettle to brew a strong pot of Yorkshire tea.
What else? She is settling into a new normalcy
with remarkable eficiency.
“I hope I like it. I think I will,” Mum said
during our next-to-last phone chat before I left
the North Coast for my transatlantic mission. “I
just hope there’s not a lot of old people there.”
She turns 91 on Sunday.
Patrick Webb, of Long Beach., Wash., is the
former managing editor of The Daily Astorian.
Patrick Webb’s mother moved out of her home on the exact day of the month that she
moved in 62 years ago. The three-bedroom brick duplex was one of hundreds built af-
ter World War II for London commuters in villages, all clustered around train stations
ensuring easy daily access to the capital.
DAVID F. PERO, Editor & Publisher
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