Years ago I had a next door neighbour who taught me a great deal. Her name was "Miss Amphyllis Carter" and was a genuine "Edwardian lady" who died just a couple of weeks short of her hundredth birthday.
We lived next door to her for the last fifteen years of her life and we had become very close.She had an MA in literature from the days when women rarely got a degree let alone a Masters, and she was clever, wise, thoughtful, humourous and incredibly kind. She was a delightful friend.
She was unmarried, and lived alone and she was also blind, had been so since her early eighies, a fact that never got her down, she coped incredibly and even had a few "elderly friends" over for a church service every Thursday morning because, she said, they weren't well enough to go to church! She got all the chairs ready for them, and made all of their coffees and never asked for any help. She never worried that our beliefs differed, and showed genuine interest in other people's perspectives . She was really quite remarkable.
Every day, she would set her table for lunch, complete with tablecloth and napkins even if it was just "meals on wheels" or perhaps something my husband had cooked, and she sat at the table as if she was in a restaurant, and cleared everything away herself.
On the eve of the Millenium she asked Gez if he would loosen the top of a bottle of "babycham" for her because she intended to wake up at midnight, listen to the radio and "see" in the New year!
We spent a bit of every day together, and she would talk about the things she had heard on the news, and her thoughts on them.
She would ask me to describe things to her, like "What does that little lime tree at the end of the garden look like at the moment?" or "Are those snowdrops near the gate out yet"? I would describe them to her and she would say "OH yes! I remember when that tree looked just like that!" She listened avidly to radio 4 and knew all about the World's condition. She once asked me to describe Sadam Hussain's face, and when I did, she said "Yes that's just how I envisaged him, an archetypal bully!"
The point is that because I was being asked to describe things all around me, it meant I had to LOOK and really think about what I was seeing, far more than I would normally have done. Amphyllis taught me to properly look, and actually see. It was a great lesson!
I thought about this because I was wondering how I would have described things to her now? what would she have made of the world? I could have told her about a large orange faced man who seems to hate everyone, of marches and banners, of sad faces and fear. I could have described children dying trying to get to a safe country, our miserable faces when we realised that Brexit was really going to happen! and her face no doubt would have matched our own!
She had been through two world wars, lost a brother in each, seen depressions and booms, been careful not to waste water or food had and given to every single charity that ever asked her to contribute. She loved this world and I think my world was a lot poorer for her passing, but I hope to be as mindful as she was of properly seeing everything that really matters.
Thanks Amphyllis I miss you!
