THINKING THROUGH MY FINGERS: Eleanor Rigby: An Obituary

Tuesday 12 December 2017

Eleanor Rigby: An Obituary

ST. JOSEPH’S REST HOME NEWSLETTER

ELEANOR RIGBY: AN OBITUARY

Father Michael McKenzie

Eleanor Rigby (Lennon & McCartney)

Eleanor Rigby, picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been. Lives in a dream
Waits at the window, wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door. Who is it for?
All the lonely people where do they all come from?
All the lonely people where do they all belong?

Father McKenzie, writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear, No one comes near

Look at him working, darning his socks in the night when there's nobody there. What does he care? All the lonely people.......

Eleanor Rigby, died in the church and was buried along with her name. Nobody came
Father McKenzie, wiping the dirt from his hands as he walks from the grave, No one was saved, all the lonely people......

My friend and former housekeeper, Eleanor Rigby (b. January 28^th 1944 – d. January 26^th 2016), who has died two days before her 72^nd birthday was a quietly inspiring woman who spent her life working in the background serving others. Unassuming, but with a gentle and infectious sense of humour, she was little noticed by those she served but her quiet determination and kindness ensured that she touched and enriched the lives of many. Asking little of life, she never sought recognition or fortune but simply made the world a better place.

I first met Eleanor in 1949 whilst training for the priesthood here at St Joseph’s. Eleanor was, at the time, five years old and living with her mother who was housekeeper at the presbytery. Their home had been bombed in 1944 when Eleanor was only a few weeks old and the church had provided emergency accommodation in the presbytery for the mother and baby. When her father, John Rigby, who Eleanor never met, died in the Normandy landings in June 1944 the family were left homeless. Eleanor’s mother (also Eleanor) was offered the post of housekeeper – cleaning, cooking and washing for the Priest in charge and the three young priests who lived in the presbytery. Little did I know when I left St Joseph’s at the end of my training that our paths would cross again, but in 1959, on the death of Father O’Connell, I was appointed Priest in charge at St Joseph’s.

When I took up my post Eleanor had just left school and spent much of her time nursing her ailing mother until she finally passed away in 1965. While other teenage girls enjoyed the swinging 60s she was caring for her mother or attending to us priests and I have often reflected on life’s cruelties; Liverpool in those days seemed capital of the world but the swinging 60s passed Eleanor by. We priests had chosen a life of service; she had no such choice, it was her lot in life – although she never viewed it that way. On her mother’s death Eleanor, with no family, asked if she could take over her mother’s work. I had no hesitation in agreeing. It was the best decision that I ever made.

Like her mother Eleanor took a huge pride in her work. Nothing was too much trouble; cleaning, mending, washing, ironing and cooking were all done with gusto and love. She believed profoundly in the maxim “cleanliness is next to godliness” – many’s the time she would gently chide me for some small misdemeanour in my dress or shake her head, in resignation and say “No, no, no Father, you can’t go out like that – let me sort you out”. Gradually she spread her efforts into the church, although the church itself was not part of her remit – nothing gave her greater pleasure than to polish the altar table, dust the pews or ensure that the notice board was up to date and looking cared for. She would spring clean the vestry at the drop of a hat and nothing missed her eye. Hymn books were always repaired, stored neatly, candlesticks brightly polished, the Communion wine always topped up, cassocks cleaned and repaired and faded flowers quickly removed and replaced. I was proud of my Church – and increasingly grateful for, and dependent upon, Eleanor.

In her personal life Eleanor was the same; always smart and well turned out, even when cleaning, polishing or cooking. It was an essential part of her being.“You never know when you are going to meet your maker” was a favourite saying – and one she had inherited from her mother. Never once, in all the years I knew her, did she leave her little flat under the presbytery eaves without first checking her appearance in the mirror by the door and, most important for her, making sure that her make-up was intact. “After all” she would mischievously smile “I don’t want to give the good St Peter a fright when I arrive at the Pearly Gates do I? That would never do, now would it Father!”

Eleanor was a quiet stalwart of our church – indeed, in many ways its heartbeat and its strength. Every Mass, wedding, christening or funeral bore her mark – the church gleamed and she was an unseen, unknown yet vital ever present. At every wedding she would be there before the ceremony checking that all was well, and as it should be but as the guests arrived she would quietly disappear. Often, after the ceremony, I would catch her face gazing wistfully from her bedroom window onto the presbytery lawn as the guests gathered for photographs. At christenings, as the proud parents showed off their new baby I would see her face smiling benignly, almost longingly, at the family group. But when everyone had departed, as if by magic, the confetti and rice would disappear, the font emptied of Holy Water and all would be as before. When trainee priests lived at the presbytery she was a second mother; variously spoiling and chiding them as her mother had done to me all those years before - and as any good mother would do. I once asked if she missed not having a family of her own but with typical stoicism she replied “Lord, Father, what a question! I suppose once I hoped that I’d meet someone, I’d have loved children of my own you know but it wasn’t to be. No point dwelling on what we can’t change now is there Father? And anyway, look at me, I’m so lucky with all the weddings and brides and grooms and then their children I’ve got my own big family haven’t I.” And it was true; they might not have realised it but Eleanor had indeed been a part of their lives – she made the important days of their family life successful and special. Weddings, christenings, funerals – all made days to remember and cherish. With these and with the motherly care she lavished upon me and my young priests St Joseph’s was indeed her family.

But by 1990s the area was being cleared as part of the city’s slum clearance programme. Families were moved away and re-housed on new estates and our congregation dwindled. It was not uncommon for me to lead a Mass where only a very few were present so it came as no surprise, when I learned that St Joseph’s would close and re-open, refurbished as a multi-faith community centre serving the 21^st century needs of a regenerated multi-ethnic district. It was time for me to go so in 1999 I took retirement and was offered a flat here in St Joseph’s Rest Home For Retired Clergy. I requested a place for Eleanor, too, and this was granted – her flat being just along the corridor from mine – until, that is, she passed away two days before her birthday.

Our retirement years were good years. Eleanor, ever busy, cleaned, shopped and increasingly cared for me as my arthritis worsened. These weeks since her passing have been lonely. I miss the evenings when we listened to the radio – me reading my newspaper or re-reading old sermons, Eleanor busying herself with some little job before making us both a drink. Then at 9 o’clock on the dot she would announce “I’m away to my bed Father – my beauty sleep you know!” So now, I’m learning to attend to my own needs – but I often feel her presence as I iron a shirt or darn a sock: “No, no, Father that won’t do” she whispers “You can’t go out looking like that”- and I smile and perhaps shed a tear; like the good shepherd, she is still watching and caring for me.

It was perhaps not inappropriate that Eleanor passed away suddenly whilst doing what she loved best - helping with the cleaning in the little chapel here at the rest home. She had volunteered for this on becoming a resident. I took charge of her funeral and it was indeed a privilege to lead her service. It was sad that after a life of quietly serving the community and the church that the congregation comprised of just a few officials from the home and the undertakers but perhaps that is how she would have wanted it – no pomp or ceremony, just a quiet and dignified. That was, I think, what Eleanor would have wished – to be remembered as quiet, and dignified.

Just before her funeral I made a last visit to her flat. By the door was her little tray with her jars of make- up, comb, brush and so on. I bundled them up to take to the undertaker – “After all, Father” I seemed to hear her whisper, “you can’t have me arriving in heaven frightening the angels or not looking my best when I meet my maker. That would never do, now would it?” From the day I first met her as a child Eleanor always called me ‘Father’ – never once did she call me Michael. Perhaps that was her natural reserve but, standing by her grave reflecting upon this woman who had been so much part of my life, I did wonder if, to Eleanor, I had indeed become the father that she never knew. I’d like to think so. I would have been proud to call her my daughter.

Tony Beale: 2016

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Marks on a Page

I have always loved the sound and feel of words. I’m sure that I didn’t understand most of what I was singing when, as a child, I stood in school assembly each morning singing from the great Ancient & Modern Hymnal but I can still vividly remember being gripped, excited and mesmerised by the power and beauty of the words in front of me: “Immortal, invisible, God only wise, In light inaccessible, Hid from our eyes, Most blessed, most glorious, the Ancient of Days, Almighty, victorious, Thy great name we praise”. How could one not be moved and excited by those words? Or, as a callow teenager from the back streets of a northern industrial town I was, I remember, bowled over by the simplicity and beauty of Robert Browning’s wonderful evocation of a spring morning in his short verse Pippa’s Song: The year's at the spring ,And day's at the morn; Morning's at seven; The hillside's dew-pearled; The lark's on the wing; The snail's on the thorn: God's in His heaven — All's right with the world! If that doesn’t make you feel good about the world and about mankind then you really are a lost cause!

My world in those far off days was seldom, if ever, one of dew pearled hillsides or larks or snails on thorns; it was a world of endless grim rows of terraced houses, of the smoke belching factory chimneys and pavements vibrating as you walked past the mighty cotton factories such as Horrockes’. The very earth shuddered beneath your feet when you walked past these dark satanic mills; the great looms pounding out as they wove the cotton cloth which, as I was often reminded by my aunty and mother – both weavers, - was why “England’s bread hung by Lancashire’s thread”.

But I loved those words – the sound of them, the feel of them, they way they looked on the page, the visions that they conjured up in my young mind - the great hymns of my school days, poetry such as Browning’s, books such as Treasure Island or Children of the New Forest took me to other places and other lives far away from the dark satanic mills of northern England. And I have never lost that love and fascination with words. When I sit in a Mozart opera or a Shakespeare play or enjoy a musical such as Les Mis I am quite mesmerised at the cleverness of it – the production the costumes, the energy......but most of all the words; their beauty, power, how they "fit" the music or the context; I find them both compelling and often overpowering.

Now, as teacher long retired, I look back on my years in the classroom. I can still quote the words from many of the poems and books that I read to children and the lessons that I taught. Nothing gave me a greater thrill than when the class were hanging onto every word – whether it be a fun poem like The Hairy Toe, one of the great children’s poems such as The Highwayman or wonderful children’s books such as Alan Garner’s Elidor – a classic of fear and magic that leaves Harry Potter looking a pale, limp imitation – or Meindert DeJong’s evocative and beautifully written The Wheel on the School. Even today I still get the occasional email from a past pupil who remembers being in my class perhaps thirty or forty years ago and still remembers with excitement or affection a particular book or poem that we read or listened to.

But, today, in the eighth decade of my life, I am saddened when I look around me and see how language and words, through carelessness, neglect or action, are being debased and devalued. The impact of text messaging/email and the like, a lack of care with diction and pronunciation, a desire for “plain English” (a euphemism for an easy, shallow vocabulary and structure) and the lauding in the media and in public life of people who in the misguided name of equality, speak “the language of the people” – often coarse, badly structured and poorly expressed – is for me source of worry and regret. The ability to communicate through language – be it spoken or written - is largely what separates us from the animal kingdom; it is why humanity has developed to the stage that it has. It is the secret of how we think and act – without language and effective communication with others we could not think, act, understand or create in the way that we do.

Yet the opportunities for using and developing language are so great today; as I sit writing this I can in a few seconds put it onto my blog and through the magic of the internet it is immediately available to everyone in the world should they care to look. What would Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Darwin, Aristotle, Dickens or Milton have thought of that? What would the men like Johannes Gutenberg who half a millennia ago laboured – often in great fear of persecution - to print the first books and so bring the printed word to Europe have thought of that? They would have marvelled – and yet we, today, show scant regard and an increasing tendency to not value it. We have a President of America – the most powerful and influential man in the world - who is functionally illiterate. But people believed that it was wise to vote for such a man and months after his election still tolerate his ignorance; and more worryingly, he is happy to display his linguistic deficiencies and his ignorance to the whole world. It really is a perfect illustration of the Emperor's new clothes where millions are so easily taken in by the obviously false and trivial.

We live in an increasingly complex and interdependent world and in order to make sense of that world and to function within it, to make the right decisions when we vote or when we listen to those who would lead or influence us we need to understand the complexities and nuances of language. Sadly, society across the western world, but especially in the UK and USA, is becoming lazy, uncaring or dismissive of this important fact. We will all, in the longer term, suffer and pay for it.

And as I get older I increasingly feel the need to write things down – not particularly to help me remember things, important though that is – but rather to leave my humble scratching on the page just as the first cave men drew their wall pictures to retell their story, and later hooded monks wrote beautiful manuscript to retell the Bible stories, and then great authors, scientists, playwrights, travellers, journalists, philosophers, politicians, poets and the rest recorded their ideas, created imaginary worlds, and spread mankind’s knowledge. This blog is my digital equivalent of marks on the page – my words and those of others.

Tuesday 12 December 2017

Eleanor Rigby: An Obituary

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