Copyright@gerry rose

 On her way home from Babs’ Jilly reflected on the day. She was concerned about leaving Babs on her own. Babs was clearly exhausted and did just need to have a soak in the bath and go to bed. Jilly would text her when she got in and remind her that she was around and free to talk at any hour if Babs felt the need to talk. She didn’t feel that Babs was going to act on the thoughts she had about taking her own life. She had the number of the Samaritans. Jilly just felt concerned about Babs.

 Jilly knew what it was like to feel desperately alone and feeling like no one was there to support you. This was a feeling that she felt quite frequently during her marriage. Being single was far better for her than being in an unhappy marriage. Marriage did not live up to her expectations. She wondered if she had always been single at heart. She hated when friends told her that she just hadn’t met the right man yet. She told them they had been listening to too many Michael Bublé songs. She hated expressions like, ‘my other half’.

 She knew however that single women like Babs were vulnerable to being mistreated by a daughter-in-law who felt threatened by a mother-in-law who doesn’t have a partner. Babs would be seen as too needy. Jilly didn’t like the sound of Eleonor, yet she felt that her son might easily become an Elliot. She decided she would talk to him about this issue when he next called her but that was a rarity. She remembered that an older colleague at work had told her that on the eve of her son’s wedding, he had told his mother that from tomorrow onwards, his wife would be the centre of his universe. Jilly can remember finding that quite sad. She felt that humans operated in groups and within a group there was generally a balance of who needed support at certain times, why would a loved and respected mother suddenly find herself very low in the pecking order? A family or a group of friends usually managed to support someone who needed the support at any given time. Wasn’t this what humans did? Even animals who lived in family groups found a way of supporting each other. Or was she wrong to assume that a son would still want to care about his mother and did this really have to compete with his love of his wife? Do mothers really have favourites, or is there usually enough love to go around?

 She knew that young adults these days the so called Millennials which seemed to stretch from 1981-1996, tended not to feel a sense of duty and were on the whole self-centred these days. She knew that it was her generation the so called ‘Boomers’ who were to blame, because we raised these indulged children. Jilly can remember wanting to provide her children with all of the opportunities that she didn’t have when she was growing up. She was brought up in the era where post war austerity was still around. She felt that her generation had created these entitled adults. Her children were now in their mid to late 20’s and they definitely felt entitled to have the best phones, felt ordering a coffee to go was the only way to drink coffee, ordered endless takeaways because their time was precious and cooking was a drag and felt subscriptions to Netflix etc were essential. Her son’s T.V. was twice as big as hers and it had to be the best and latest too. The flats her children rented had to be state of the art. They didn’t want any of her old furniture either. They would rather buy a new sofa than get one reupholstered. They seemed to lack any sense of nostalgia for their past and told her to get rid of her collection of their old baby clothes, teeth and school reports. Yet they still accused her generation of ruining the planet!

 Jilly was looking forward to her internship at the interior design shop which would start on Monday 9^th September 2017. Talking to Babs had only made this opportunity even more sensible. Babs felt that she had lost her sense of purpose. How could she find things in Hove which made her feel like life was good and worth living. Jilly wondered if Babs had considered moving closer to her son. She was not convinced that that would be a good idea. It was not something she would consider, Jilly was ploughing her own furrow and did not feel the need to invade her children’s pitches. Jilly always found herself talking in cliches when considering what to do next.

 She sent Babs a WhatsApp message to remind her that she was available to chat. She suggested that she popped over to have a coffee in the morning. She was pleased when she saw her message had been read and there was a thumbs up emoji and ‘Come over around 11am and thanks for today you are a star!’

 Jilly knew that women who lived on their own and were over 60, needed to support each other. When she lived in Norfolk, she did not have the support network that she needed. She wanted to build this network in Hove. She had made a good start.

 Jilly couldn’t believe that the summer would soon be over. She realised that she had not been away since she had moved down to Hove. Once her internship was over, she would book herself a holiday. She was quite used to booking trips with companies who specialised in singles holidays. She fancied a Nile Cruise. She had travelled with Exodus on many occasions and had always felt that the company had taken good care of her. Whenever she looked at friends posts who were part of a couple on Facebook, she was always curious about how honest they were about their holidays with their partners. Their posts always seemed to boast that they were having such a fabulous time, but when she spoke to them after the holiday they seemed to have a huge list of things that had really irritated them about their partner and his behaviour on holiday. She listened to complaints about a partner who didn’t want to explore and just wanted to sit on a beach. She listened to her friends who complained about a partner who just seemed to be unable to relax. She realised that being single had its advantages. She did not have to do anything that she didn’t want to do. She was aware that when you went on an organised trip you had to accept the itinerary and there were less opportunities for doing exactly what you wanted to do. However, she was prepared to do this in order to have a good experience when travelling alone. She always thought that the most important part of travelling alone was having someone to have a drink and dinner with. She never shared a bedroom and always felt that she could escape to her own space when she needed to!

 Just before she was about to go to bed after the news at 10, she received a text from Babs which concerned her.