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Ave Atque Vale: Goodbye, Miss Chips…
My head kept telling me she wouldn’t live forever, but my heart simply would not believe it:
Patricia Helen Mead Muffett, July 13, 1923–December 10, 2022, Rest in Peace. It’s the first time for a little more than one-hundred fifteen years, that neither my Dad, nor at least one of his siblings, has walked the earth. For me, it’s the end of an era. The last human being who knew me as an infant, or even as a very young child (my sister wasn’t born until I was almost seven years old) is gone.
She’s now reunited with her beloved “Ma” and “Pa,” and (back row) Arthur and Maurice; middle row–left–Mary; and front row–left–Dad, and–right–Isobel. Pat’s front-and-center, as is only proper.
The photo must date from about 1927, and was taken in Pwllheli, Wales, where the family spent many happy summer holidays. Granny and Grandpa Muffett’s ashes are scattered nearby, and Pat’s will be, as well.
I last spoke with Pat on November 22. She was very weak, but with the usual Muffett spunk, she was determined to find out how I and the dogs were. I’m pretty sure that her slice of heaven is full of dogs. Perhaps even some of mine.
Lord, I remember the day she took Mr. She to see an Aston Villa match (“proper football,” she instructed him it was) in Birmingham. And thinking how brave he was to get in a car that she was driving. Although, I suppose, he didn’t know any better. And I certainly wasn’t going to tell him.
And so many family stories. An excerpt from a post I wrote on her 94th birthday:
How can I best describe Pat for you? I’d say, if she were to be featured in a movie, that the only actress fit to play her might have been Katharine Hepburn. Ferociously bright. Tall. Lanky, sometimes a bit awkward and gawky. But always comfortable in her own skin. “With it.” Self-confident. Articulate. Determined (this is not a trait that stands out much in my family). Kind. Always youthful and sometimes childlike in her enthusiasms. Intellectually curious. And even the voice. A bit loud. Staccato. Exclamatory. Unique.
I’ve only every seen Pat embarrassed once in my life.
It was about fifteen years ago. I was on a visit to the UK, by myself, and we had made our usual pilgrimage to The Peacock Inn, a nice pub, restaurant and hotel, centrally located for family members to swarm to, on our all-too-rare get togethers. We were enjoying our main course, and a few drinks, and carrying on as Muffetts do (this means: all talking loudly at once, and no-one really listening to what anyone else is saying), when a piercing voice from across the room called out, “It’s Miss Muffett, isn’t it?”
The voice belonged to a woman a bit older than me who hadn’t seen or heard from Pat since she was a five-year-old pupil in Pat’s preparatory class, over four decades previously. Much reminiscing ensued, but unusually, and for one of the few times I’ve known her, Pat didn’t say much.
Her pupils who’ve stayed in touch with her (and many have) love her. She receives Christmas cards from all over the world every year, and occasional visits from those who live in, and pass through, Birmingham. Although she herself never married, James Hilton’s words about another dedicated teacher might have been written for Pat:
“I thought I heard one of you saying it was a pity–a pity I never had any children–But I have, you know . . . I have . . .”
“Yes. I have,” he added with quavering merriment. “Thousands of ’em. Thousands of ’em . . .”
Happy Birthday, our very own Miss Chips. May you live forever.
Crumbs. Then there was the post I wrote on her 98th birthday.
Pat, like quite a few members of her birth family, up to and including present generations, was a very organized and efficient person. Her mother’s favorite phrase, when recounting her progress on a particular project was “I’m well forward!” indicating that she was on schedule, and that she intended to bring things to closure on time and under budget.
Thanks, Auntie Pat for–when the inevitable day came–choosing the one that found me surrounded by friends who–as much as is possible in the circumstances–knew you, loved you, understood my grief, and joined me in raising a heartfelt toast. And thank you, those I told, for letting me tell the story here in my own good time.
Every once in a while, we are gifted with a small miracle. Eighteen months ago, one occurred in my own family, when my brother and his beloved had a baby. My only niece. My late father and mother’s only grandchild. Named “Isobel,” after Pat’s sister. The joy that Pat felt in this baby, and in the continuation of my father’s “line” was palpable. I’m so very glad she got to see this.
I don’t expect little “Issy” will actually remember her great-auntie Pat. But I know she’ll learn the stories. And that, when she is, perhaps, a very old lady herself, she’ll be able to reach back through the years–almost two hundred of them–and tell some of them herself, as I have so often here.
Thanks for indulging me. And thanks–above all–for recognizing Auntie Pat as the national treasure she is.
Such a beautiful tribute to her, She. Thank you for sharing her with us all these years. I will miss her, since I will no longer be able to learn about her through your stories. Love and sympathy.
I love the way you show love for your family members.
I think I developed some of that maybe naturally and maybe from some early events in my life.
I remember when I was a kid growing up a 2nd great uncle of mine would come to visit his niece, my grandmother with whom we lived. He was a twin born in 1868. They didn’t have names for them ready so they were called Little and Big Hughes, and that stayed with them all their lives. I saw my Uncle Lit many times and remember how his hand would shake when he moved about with a coffee cup and saucer. I saw my Uncle Big a couple of times, too. They were the two people of earliest birth that I met in my family. My great-grandmother was their sister but I never met her.
It is as if I knew her, thanks to your writing of her and your estimable family.
Thank you for the introductions. May little Isobel come to appreciate the stories too.
We are all a little better for having our lives touched by your recorded memories of Auntie Pat. @she
Thanks, you guys (and gal). She knew about you, we talked about you, and she was so generous in sharing her memories and stories, and glad to know that I was passing them along.
That was a wonderful tribute. It is really thought provoking to recognize the change in a generation.
This summer, my Uncle Joe passed away. We never lived very close to him, but when I stayed for the summer with my grandparents, I could walk down to talk to him or go fishing.
He was the one of my grandparents children who stayed on to farm and was pretty low key. It wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I learned that he had fought in the Battle of the Bulge. He had never talked about it in my presence.
When I found out about his death, it struck me that it marked the end of my mother’s generation. What really hit me was the second realization that with my older brother’s death a while back, I now represent the oldest of our generation.
Yes, it’s a sobering thought. I am not quite the oldest member of the family left, but there’s not much headroom.
Funny how things go. My sister has been sorting out the arrangements for Pat’s cremation and memorial service, the second part of which won’t likely happen until the first week of February.
Meanwhile, sister sent the in-group in this matter Pat’s wishes: Very traditional, Book of Common Prayer (the proper one), none of this modern stuff. (Shades of Dad’s insistence that he forbade his burial service being officiated by a female vicar.)
Among Pat’s bits and pieces, is a request for a reading by Canon Henry Scott Holland:
Very nice. And very Pat.
Almost simultaneously, and at the same time, I independently fired over to my sister the text of a poem written by English comedienne Joyce Grenfell. Grenfell, an upper-class ingenue who–to the dismay of her family–did a bit of a Vera Lynn turn only with comedy, touring Europe and parts East during the War, bringing laughter and a sense of home to the British troops. After the war she appeared in several British movies, beginning with her turn in The Happiest Days of Your Life as the gawky, horse-faced games mistress Miss Gossage (“just call me sausage”) which endeared her to generations of nostalgic British boarding-school girls.
No accident that the parallels between the very bright, tall, lanky, sometimes gawky and socially-awkward Miss Gossage, and her similarities to our very own Miss Muffett, were remarked on by her family every now and then.
Late in life, Joyce Grenfell wrote a bit of poetry. Including this:
Once again, so very Pat.
The fact that these two–almost identical–bits of advice dealing with the loss of a loved one, both written in the voice of the departed, are so similar, and virtually crossed in virtual cyberspace winging their way in both directions across the Atlantic reassure me that I actually “got” Auntie Pat, and perhaps that I’ve represented her pretty fairly here over the years.
We’re figuring out how we can work them both in to the remembrance of her life. All I know at this point is that there’ll be no “Sunday voices,” much “laughter at the little jokes we enjoyed together.” And singing.
Lots of singing. Lord, Pat had a magnificently loud, and only slightly (that’s the worst) off-key voice when it came to psalms and hymns. I’ll miss that too.
Recursive loop alert!
http://announcements.telegraph.co.uk/deaths/261543/muffett
In an almost supernatural twist of fate, my sister sent me–yesterday–a photo of an index card, in Pat’s own handwriting, she just found in Pat’s belongings. Here it is:
Clearly something, or Someone, is moving in a very mysterious way here…..