My grandmother was institutionalised at the age of 39. I grew up knowing nothing about her and never quizzed my dad. I was too self-absorbed to think about the ellipses in my family history. This suited him. He wanted to efface HD from the record and would have succeeded if he hadn’t got ill himself. When he became symptomatic we all started asking questions, but he remained evasive.
It has been very strange getting to know my grandmother after all this time. Murphy (as we always called my dad) was more open in his later years and probably would have told me anything I wanted to know if he’d been able to. I’ve pieced her story together with my uncle’s help. Uncle Colin, a salesman from Oz, is more forthcoming, although my aunt says he never talked about his childhood until recently. He is a larger than life character with a loud voice and a persuasive manner. He couldn’t be more different from my dad. He is straightforward where Murphy was enigmatic. Opinion is divided about whether there is a physical resemblance. I think the jawline is similar.
Colin now wants to know everything about his family. He has spent the past year on ancestry.com tracing the line back and firing off letters to family friends looking for clues to his identity. He dug up a picture of my great grandmother who, I was pleased to discover, looks like an olden day lesbian with short hair and broad shoulders alongside her elegant consumptive looking sister who died young. But there was no picture of Ida.
By chance, last year I came across a memoir by a family friend, Peter Congdon. A Bomb in a Basket recounts the six years of World War 2 as seen through the author’s eyes. I thought it would be good background reading, which would give me a flavour of life in wartime Plymouth. I was surprised and pleased to discover that Peter was a good friend of the Ravens and we feature prominently in the book. Peter went to the same school as my dad and his brothers: Johnson Terrace school. In the chapter Plymouth in the Front Line, he describes the Ravens. This description of Ida made me cry.
‘Reg had married Ida his wife in the early 30s. She was a strange woman with a deep voice and rumour had it she had been a nurse. Although apparently educated and articulate Ida presented as a shabbily dressed lady who was often to be seen smoking cigarettes. Her standards of hygiene, cleanliness and housework were not of the highest quality and much of the responsibility for running the home was left to Reg who was often seen shopping for the family. At the time, little did we know that Ida was suffering from a serious mental illness that was to worsen over the years.’
Ida Raven: lost and found.
According to Colin, she hardly ever left the house. I can picture Ida on the sofa (‘in her misery’ to use Colin’s phrase) with no pharmaceutical props chain smoking while family life went on around her. The radio was always on; Ida liked radio dramas. I’ve asked him lots of questions about his childhood and I’m starting to form a picture of life in the two up two down in Townsend Avenue). Peter Congdon said it was ‘liberty hall’ compared with his house and they took turns jumping from the top of the wardrobe onto the bed.
There were four boys and they all have normal names apart from Vivian. Peter, Paul and Colin. Why was my dad called Vivian?
Colin said Ida was embarrassing. She did weird things that were well intentioned, like making a lurid pink blancmange birthday cake for my dad’s birthday and putting household candles on it. They were all sick. When she picked them up from school he was conscious of her dirty dress and wraith like appearance. Rationing meant a high calorie diet was difficult to muster and Ida ate porridge out of the packet.
They never doubted how much she loved them.
Ida spent two long stretches in Moorhaven Asylum in Ivybridge near Plymouth. Did she go there voluntarily? Colin doesn’t know. He remembers visiting her there and the smell of disinfectant. It looked like a grand country house with many outbuildings and beautiful views across the moor. It had its own railway station and farm. I really hope it felt like a community, not a madhouse.
What was life like for Ida? I picture Nurse Rachett in One Flew over the Cuckoos Nest on a power trip. And chemical coshes. Did anyone there understand HD? Was Ida’s treatment plan appropriate? I was worried about ECT, which must have been popular in the 40s. Looking for reassurance I did some research and I came across a social history project called ‘Memories of Moorhaven’ which I gobbled up. The accounts of staff and patients have been a valuable resource. Some people had happy memories but there were many deaths; suicide was so common in fact, that the staff became quite blasé about it. They were always scraping people off the railway tracks.
When Colin visited, he said she’d knitted a cardigan for him and she seemed quite calm, but Murphy remembered it as being ‘grim’. Was she longing for their visits? Murphy clearly longed for mine when he was in a nursing home. The regime in Red Oaks however, was more person focused and there were no suicides. I was concerned that Murph could die of boredom. He couldn’t read, listen to audiobooks or make new friends (even if he wanted to) as HD had robbed him of the power of speech. The other residents, many of whom had dementia, would wander into his room. When we visited, he was always watching BBC rolling news with the sound turned up.
Moorhaven has now been turned into a quirky, upscale housing development called Moorhaven Village. I visited it to see whether Ida’s ghost was stalking the remodeled bedrooms. It was pouring with rain and the kids were moaning, as we were en route to a festival. They stayed in the car and I walked around trying to picture Ida doing exercises on the lawn like they were in some of the pictures I have found. The old hospital morgue has been renamed ‘Dunlivin’. Is this in poor taste? My brother Daniel thinks so. Would I have wanted to live there?
A few months ago, Colin called with some good news. He had unearthed a picture of his mother! Ida is wearing a nurse’s uniform and the picture was taken before she became symptomatic. It is here on my desk as I write. Colin says he took the picture of Ida onto the beach near where he lives in Sydney and said goodbye to her.
I just wish Ida had been part of my children’s lives, like my husband’s mother, not a low res ghost in a silver frame.
Forgetting myself 