Mother
I think Mother was born at Maryport, her maiden name was Martha Annie Sides and in figure, temperament and energy she was as like my wife as could possibly be. Never finished working, a wonderful cook, and kept the house polished and shining from top to bottom. I learned to dance wearing her slippers, they were size three.
Mother died when I was about fifteen. After a long illness lasting over a year, during which time she could not speak and had the use of only one side, due to a stroke. She died on her birthday, May 7th 1926, as my sister Moll and I were lifting her out of bed on to the couch, while Moll made the bed. She died quite suddenly, and although she had lain so long in that pitiful state I don't think she suffered any pain. Even so it was a very sad time for us all, at least for Dad and Moll and myself. Ruth was away most of the time and Doris was living in New Zealand.
Her death brought about the breaking up of the home at Mountain View after a year or so. I had gone to work at Carlisle and the last time I went home must have been a day or so after the "sale". I walked into the empty house, which had been a lovely house, to me a safe refuge against any ill. Dad sat in the kitchen, he had kept one chair and the kitchen table.
The room was darkening, it being evening. All the well known things were quite gone. The pictures, the ornaments off the mantleshelf, the rugs from the floors, even the table was missing a cloth. No clock was ticking on the shelf and the windowpane bare and cold without its curtainings.
It was a shock, and although I had known or should have known that everything was to be sold, I hadn't believed it could really happen. We spoke no word, but each wept on the other's shoulder.
You see there were sad times but we remember them least of all as the years pass on. What effect these things have on young minds we don't know but effect they must have.