The last female cousin

of the Senior Cat's generation died on Sunday morning. Her son, unable to find a phone number in the confusion surrounding her death, left me an email.

He isn't someone I really know. He never came to the clan  reunions. His brother never came either. They were not part of my childhood. For many years we had no direct contact at all. Perhaps this is not so surprising for second cousins?

Their mother however was in contact and not just at Christmas. Letters would arrive several times a year from the farm in a neighbouring state. Her mother, my great aunt, always insisted that her daughter had married a "grazier". She had pretensions. Her son-in-law  used to call himself a "sheep farmer" even though he ran a highly successful breeding program and his animals were much sought after. "They are only for carpet wool" he would tell people.

Dad's cousin was mostly a city girl. She had not spent the same amount of time on the dairy farm my great-grandmother owned. It was the boys who spent their time there - little wonder when they could get out and do things. A girl would probably have been more closely confined to the house and required to help more with household duties than general farm duties. 

But still M.... married a farmer. She met him in the church office - where she was a deaconess. It must have been strange for her to find herself almost isolated on a farm but it seems to have been a happy marriage. She admitted once that it was a steep learning curve. The one thing she could never really handle was J..., her husband, killing a sheep. She became vegetarian even while she cooked the meat for him and her two boys. Apart from that though she did all that was expected of her as a housewife and, like her grandmother before her, she became the local unpaid social worker, supporter of the church and the community. 

When J....had to go into residential aged care and she was alone in the house she began to make phone calls to other people, often cousins in distant places.  She must have spent hours and hours on the phone. Even when the list began to dwindle through dementia and death she continued to call people.  Almost every afternoon we would get a call from her.  Almost every afternoon I would spend ten minutes reassuring her that we were okay and asking what she had done with her day. 

I didn't worry too much when there were two days without a call. It was a bit unusual but it had happened before. She had sounded fine when I last spoke to her. I knew there were people in and out of her home everyday. I tried calling her on the third day but there was no answer. Had she gone into a week's respite without letting me know? She did that once before. 

And then came the email from her son. Middle Cat and I went to see the Senior Cat together. He took the news quietly but he said, "She was younger than I am." Yes, 95 to his 97.  

It leaves the Senior Cat, his cousin P and his cousin B... all in different states. None of them will see one another again. P.... and the Senior Cat talk occasionally on the phone but it is a generation almost gone. 

My second cousin M... phoned me yesterday morning and said, "Do you realise I'm the oldest of the next generation?"'

"And head of the clan here," I reminded him. 

He sighed but then he said, "Tell young P... I want something for the website when he's ready. We need to keep it up for the young ones, so they don't forget we are all family."

Brother Cat will add that something to the clan website so that M... is there - for all the family.