In memory of my Father-in-Law

The Christmas and New Year celebration was dampened for us by the death of my father-in-law Geoff on Tuesday 28th December 2004. He was 70 years old. Strangely enough, his death happened on the fifth anniversary of his heart attack, when he was clinically dead for over 10 minutes. It feels as though our prayers back then for more time were answered with an extra 5 years - no more and no less. It turns out that Geoff had a collapse in the bathroom the week before, after which he was experiencing some mobility problems. The hospital believed that he might have had a minor stroke, but he died before they did any scans. So far as my mother-in-law Hilda could tell he was just having problems moving about, he seemed OK otherwise, so she didn't say anything to us. He wasn't in any pain at all, and just died somewhat unexpectedly in his sleep.

So far as I have gathered Geoff lived his whole life in St. Helens, Merseyside. His mother's side of the family was Welsh, and he still has cousins living around Llandudno (apologies if this spelling is incorrect). His father's side of the family was Scottish. He did a couple of years national service in the 1950s. He played rugby league for Liverpool City and Warrington for a brief spell. Most of his working life was spent at Triplex (part of Pilkington Glass) as a fitter. He was married to Hilda for over 40 years, and they had one daughter who I am now married to. After his heart attack five years ago his short-term memory was never very good, though it seemed to me that it had gradually improved over time.

One of the things that amazed me about Geoff was that whenever we went out somewhere on our visits to St. Helens, Geoff would always be bumping into people that he had worked with years before. This also happened occasionally on Geoff and Hilda's many trips to Blackpool. Judging by this he appears to have been popular, and this is borne out by the number of cards that Hilda received and the number of people that turned up at the funeral.

We have been in St. Helens for most of the last two weeks, though we're now at home. I think Hilda will be OK; she has good neighbours and good friends who will look out for her better than if we brought her back down South. I don't think she will bother watching her blood pressure though, we're just glad that she's eating at the moment. We had to feed her party food for the first few days.

We're both back at work now, but feel very tired. I don't know if it's just the accumulated strain of the last weeks, or whether we've grown unused to getting up before 6:30 in the mornings.

Goodbye Geoff. You're missed by a lot of people.