I guess I’m the only one here who remembers my big sister Shelagh as a child. She left home when I was only nine, but a lot of good times were packed into those nine years. I’ll tell you a few of them and how I think they signaled the shape her life would take when she grew up.
One of my earliest memories of Shelagh was her VOICE. One morning when I was a toddler and she was around ten, we were in her room, and I recall the warm sunshine spilling through an open window while I sat on the floor watching her make her bed. She was singing “Sweet Nightingale” a song I loved. I know she was singing it for me because as you probably know I was called Betty in those days. She sang the line “Pretty Betty don’t fail, for I’ll carry your pail Safely home to your cot as we go” just for me. It is a memory that makes me feel nearly as happy now as it did that morning. I’ve kept it close to my heart for over seventy years.
Shelagh always had the gift of such a lovely, warm voice. Her beautiful speaking voice was something she never lost, though near the end she could no longer sing. I am sure that all through her working life, when she spoke with all the sad, lonely, troubled people she met, the warm tone of her beautiful voice brought great comfort to them.
Another vivid childhood memory, perhaps a year or two later, was the magic carpet ride. We were probably around five and twelve then. She asked me to sit on her bed and shut my eyes tight, and suddenly we were sailing away on a magic carpet, bouncing over treetops and over mountains and over the sea. What sights we saw, all conjured up by her IMAGINATION. Gentle breezes fanned my cheeks. Birds called to us, sounding just like a toy warbler we had. Below us were exotic cities with names like Samarkand, Byzantium, and Astrakhan. I could see towers and minarets, and beautiful gardens as she described them to me. And the smells! She wafted the scents under my nose.
Oh, how lovely to smell the cinnamon and cloves and exotic perfumes of those places, spices from our dad’s Watkins Products and Doreen's cologne. As we sailed back home on our magic carpet, I felt like I had truly traveled to the far corners of the earth. Shelagh never lost her ability to treat others to her wonderful imagination. She could make up spooky stories that sent shivers up my spine, which I found more creepy than entertaining, though I think she really wanted to entertain with her stories rather than frighten. As an adult her imagination also had a more concrete, visual outlet in the way she decorated her home, always choosing the picturesque and unusual over the plain or merely functional.
But at Christmas she really indulged in her love of the magnificent and exotic in her decorations, all the things that stirred her imagination. In second hand stores she sought out old ornaments for their specific beauty, bobbles that caught the light, and always there were coloured bulbs. I’m glad she never lost the thrill of creating scenes to spark the imagination, to delight other people.
She loved to share her creations with her friends and family, phoning us up and saying, “You haven’t seen my Christmas tree yet. When are you coming over?”
MUSIC was her passion and her comfort. If she wasn’t playing a harmonica, accordion, guitar, or just a little tonette, she might produce music with a comb and one of Dad’s cigarette papers. She often played music for our enjoyment and hers during the nine years we lived together, as well as during a brief period in the early sixties, when Shelagh and her family lived with us. We enjoyed our own brand of musical evenings then, sitting together in the living room, singing and playing together as a family. Shelagh and Dad strummed their guitars, I plunked on the piano, and we all sang. We sang old English ballads and working songs from folk song books, popular songs we heard on the radio, our Mum and Dad’s old revival hymns, like “Rock of Ages,” “Bringing in the Sheaves,” or “In the Sweet Bye and Bye.” We sang and played “Michael Row Your Boat Ashore,” and “Tom Dooley,” songs we’d heard on tv. We sang Irish Rebel songs.
We sang songs that made us laugh and songs that made us cry. These musical evenings helped us all get through a rough patch. I know Shelagh continued to sing with her three children and their friends when they were in their teens, making her home a place where you could drop in and you knew that there would be music to lift your spirits. This was something she continued to offer for many years. I know it helped her, and I’m sure it helped raise the spirits of many others people who found comfort there.
Shelagh had a great GIFT OF MAKING PEOPLE LAUGH. As a teen, she often laughed at whatever was absurd and ridiculous in our friends and neighbours. Sometimes she drew cartoons of people, including herself, that made us chuckle. She enjoyed laughter throughout her life, even when there were bad times. We could be wallowing in our emotions and she’d say something that would have the whole room laughing.
The afternoon of the day she died I called her up and we were just talking, and laughing, on the phone, reminiscing about the old times, and I happened to ask her a question about how the icehouse they had on the farm was built. She described it to me, telling me what problems they had keeping it cold, and then…. she told me a story about going out to the icehouse to get some sausages that were stored there. She said she put her arm inside and pulled out the meat … and a weasel flew out of the bushes and grabbed the sausage and sprinted away with it. …We both had a good laugh about it and how shocked she was and then she said …that when it happened, she simply fell over on the ground laughing, it was so funny. That was Shelagh.
Thanks for the good times, Sis.