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In the 1950's, at about the time when we were moving from the shop to the flat, my wife's mother was living alone in a council house at Brownhill in Blackburn, wrote Allan Huntingdon. She was a sprightly widow aged 72 yearswho didn't much care for her daughter marrying and leaving her to fend for herself, and she tried a lot to break us up before the wedding.
One of her objections was on religious grounds. She was a very strict Catholic and could not bear to see one of her daughters marrying someone of another faith. I had already been taking instructions on changing to Catholicism so that put that objection out of the way.
She had been widowed at a very young age and had spent her whole life bringing up five children on her own. Her husband had died of cancer at the young age of 35, so she had had a very hard life. She had many good qualities and we eventually got on quite well.
Just as we were about to move, she developed an attack of nerves.
Little did I know that this was a turning point in all our lives. She decided that she could not live on her own so my wife, being the dutiful daughter, persuaded me to allow her mother to live with us.
Let me give you a little background to the family. As I have said, my mother-in-law had five children: one son and four daughters. Sadly, the son had died very young as his father had done and he left a widow with four children.
The eldest daughter also had four children, the second daughter had emigrated to Canada and eventually had seven children, and the youngest daughter had three children, leaving just my wife and myself with no ties or responsibilities.
So I didn't have much chance to object. When we notified the council that we would be giving notice on the house at Brownhill, they offered us a ground floor flat in Montague Street with two bedrooms.
When mother came too, she wanted to bring some of her furniture with her and to pacify both her and her daughter, I agreed that she should have the main bedroom as it was the only room that would take her large bedroom suite.
There begins another story. This carried on for several years until I managed to buy a bungalow in Mellor, where we all settled down for several years.
In the meantime, I had got myself involved in church work: joining the St. Vincent De Paul Society, visiting the sick and poor of the parish, and helping at church functions. I ran Bingo sessions for St Anne's Church for quite a time.
I was also involved in the initial forming of the Covenant Scheme in the parish and with another parishioner, created quite an income for the church.
Also at that time I was helping the Brockhall Hospital League of Friends and eventually became their treasurer for ten years. But that is another story.
At the age of 87, my mother-in-law decided she would like to live with her daughter in Canada. It was decided after long discussions that my wife and myself would accompany her on the journey and make a holiday of it. We had already been there once on holiday and thoroughly enjoyed it, for Vancouver is about the most beautiful city I have ever seen.
We had a great time in Canada and mum seemed content to stay there so we came home and tried to settle down, just the pair of us, It seemed strange, having the place to ourselves and it took a week or two to stop listening for footsteps in the night trotting off to the bathroom on a regular basis.
Six months passed, then I received a letter from Canada, It was addressed to me, not my wife as one would have expected, and it was from my mother-in-law asking if she could please come back to us as she couldn't settle in Vancouver as when her daughter and husband went out they left her on her own and she was terrified. Well, you must already know what a softy I really am so needless to say, I 'phoned right away and said okay.
This time it was her daughter who brought her home from Canada and stayed a few weeks on holiday before returning to Vancouver. Needless to say, the few valuable items mum had taken with her didn't come back with her.
Six months later, mum was taken ill and begged me not to let her go into hospital to die. I promised that would not happen and when the doctor said she needed to go to hospital to receive oxygen I persuaded him to let us have a prescription for it to be taken at home.
There came another problem. Apparently, only certain chemists are allowed to stock and dispense oxygen and they were all closed. I was in a quandary wondering how I could get some and I suddenly thought: Ah! Ambulances always carry oxygen on board, so I went to the ambulance depot in Blackburn and told them my predicament.
They needed some persuading and after I showed them my prescription and explained the situation one of the ambulance crews volunteered to go to my home with the oxygen and they stayed about half an hour with her, giving her the oxygen they had brought. They also told me the best chemist to go to for a home supply.
Three days later my mother-in-law died peacefully in her sleep. She had just turned 88 years old.
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