3 Anger

Often when bereaved or faced with a terminal diagnosis anger erupts. Often you are quite angry with something of no consequence,the real anger underneath erupting.Well mum vented her anger at the Pioneer.

The Pioneer Life Assurance company was where my Dad had spent the whole of his lifetime working. It was situated in a fine Victorian building in Dale Street, Liverpool, with an impressive entrance hall in marble. He returned from Glasgow in 1944 having qualified as an actuary and was employed as the companies actuary and later assistant manager and then general manager. In the early seventies it was taken over by a bigger company called The Vehicle and General. Then as now, big companies were always on the lookout to take over profitable smaller companies with a view to making their books look better.

Well Pioneer weathered the onslaught of this company which of course went broke having made money for some people and lost it for others but thanks to Dad they had not been able to get their hands of the funds he held for his pensioners, so the Pioneer went on trading but then along came another entrepreneur by the name of Jim Slater. He was considered a whizz kid of the seventies, but again Dad held the company together and it was still intact when Jim Slater was found wanting. But JimSlater had installed his own man as a managing director, apparently a man whom Mum obsessively disliked. However about this time in 1974 mum was thinking that they should make plans to retire to Australia so this they did and bought a unit in Labouchere Road in South Perth. Dad had plans of doing some part time work and apparently Dad deferred some of his payout to save tax. Well subsequently he got the request to go back to Liverpool to arrange a merger of three smaller insurance companies the Pioneer, the Blackburn and Merchantile Mutual I think. Now I think Dads idea had been to spend six months in Australia and Six months in U.k. He loved England and all his family connections. But Mum always liked her own way and by this time was disillusioned with Australia so they sold up quickly and returned and built a new house in Freshfield Road across the road from where they had used to live. I visited them there with Don and Ian in 1977 I would say. Dad was happy doing his work on the mutualisation of the three insurance companies and Mum enjoyed building a new bungalow in Formby.


However she did not remain happy with it for long. By 1978 Mum had decided Australia was where she wanted to be so another house sale and I purchased on their behalf 14 Warragoon Crescent around the corner from us so Dad finally retired again having put through the merger.He had still deferred some of his payments in a bid to save tax. Well they were settling into life in Attadale again when Dad had his fatal heart attack on Christmas Eve 1978

After initially looking very sick he perked up bit and he did tell us he had been having nightmares about the deferred amount of pension in The Pioneer account so it was worrying him. Well when he died Mum leapt into action to try and retrieve this amount which really died with him. I believe it was about eight thousand pounds.She wrote letters to The Pioneer, and to her brother David in Shropshire.George Dads brother had been given a position on the board of The Pioneer at Dads suggestion so he knew all that was going on."Try and get your mother to stop writing letters to the board bordering on the libellous " he wrote. Well I Had no chance of that but I suppose after some time things settled down.

Now thirty years later Mum has continued to receive a fantastic pension courtesy of the Pioneer indexed to cost of living. The state pension has not been so generous, the British government deciding that as she was going to Australia it would remain at the level it was when she left. Had she gone to Spain say, she would have got the normal raises as did all her peers in England. However she has been well looked after and should have no complaints.

2. The funeral

I was not yet forty although pretty close to it and this was my first experience of bereavement. True I had lost two peers at school but I was at a distance from that.Anyway Bob stepped up and arranged the funeral director and minister. The first mistake I made was thinking the children were too young to attend,not that they would have got anything out of the service as it was. It was taken by our local minister and don't get me wrong I liked him alot as a person but he was a theologian and the service consisted of bible readings that I can't even remember. Mum was in tears to such a degree that she had a nose bleed so I spent time finding her a hankie etc. Bob was also in tears because he had a flashback to his fathers funeral no doubt because he was in a haze of shock at the time of his fathers death having only just graduated when his father had died.The only other person at the funeral was Neil who had been involved since the night of my fathers fatal heart attack on Christmas Eve.

Mum and I had spent that in emergency until Dad was admitted to the coronary unit. Of course we had visited the next day Christmas Day after I had done dinner for the family only to be told not to stay long as he was very sick. Well we could see that but it was quite wrong that my mother was not encouraged to stay with him. Anyway Dad made reasonable progress and was under a good cardiologist but no one warned us that he had a tachycardia that was not a good prognostic sign and ten days later he had a cardiac arrest.So it was a big shock for us all but especially Mum.


Anyway back to the funeral. It was not a life affirming service honouring his life and he certainly did not get the obituary he deserved in The Liverpool Echo or the Daily Post. He had been a respected member of the Insurance and Business community in Liverpool. Other regrets , of course I regret that I never told him how much I loved him and how grateful I was for all he had done for me. It was always Dad who gave me support in the inevitable disagreements that I had usually with my mother.

We got some lovely letters and expressions of sympathy and I certainly learnt the importance of sending these.Out of them all I will quote the one from Margaret my cousin, (Fred's daughter). She wrote"My memories are full of warmth when I think of him: he was always kind,considerate,gentle without any malice.Our last meeting at Peters wedding last summer was typical in this respect,he was sensitive,thoughtful and encouraging, when talking about my work and future and about life in general. I am glad that this meeting remains vividly with me.I shall always cherish it as a memory of a generous,good man"

1. The story begins

It is 12 mths since this story begins, no that is not quite right. It is closer to 33 years since my father died on January 10th 1979 and from then onwards I have been chief carer and support to my mother. It has not been an easy road. I do believe that Dads main reason for relocating to Australia was because he realised his health was failing and that I would do the better job as carer in any case it was and is probably still thought of as the daughters job.But I'm sure Dad never expected me to be doing it 30 plus years later.