This is a very sentimental post.
My last surviving grandparent died today. She was born in Caerphilly (better than being born carelessly, I guess) as Peggy Jean Jenkins. Not as Margaret Jenkins, that’d be boring. And because Wales, she was never called Peggy Jean by anyone; she was Meg from birth.
Her husband, who died last year, was born in Dolygaer (I can’t think of a pun, sorry) as David Elwyn Williams. His family were more boring than Meg’s when it came to Welsh naming choices, although he was never called David by anyone; he was Elwyn from birth.
(by the way, I don’t think anyone of Welsh ancestry ever found the multiple names in the Bible weird. “Simon who is called Peter?” – “yup, I think my uncle Peter’s real name is Simon”.)
I discovered, looking up The Internets, that Meg had no online existence at all, not even dry dull database existence, whether as as Meg or Peggy Jean. This doesn’t seem right, somehow. She was far more interesting and good and excellent than most of the folk who are chronicled online.
She was a schoolteacher and a campaigner for good things and a helping-out-the-neighbours-er and a telling-people-to-stop-being-self-righteous-dicks-er and a mum and a nanna and a great-nanna.
She’s being cremated at a crematorium, by a minister of the church she’s frequented for far longer than it has existed (the 20th century was the century of left-liberal Protestant churches noticing that they were actually the same).
And she’ll be remembered more fondly (in net ratings terms), by more people, than most people who are Of Importance in the way that Society tends to measure it.
Here’s her obit in the local paper. A life in fewer words.
A woman’s not dead while her name’s still spoken.