The Women’s Institute Journal 1988 lists the comings and goings
of a retired secretary and Cooperative Society member in clipped, efficient entries.
“Dot to tea”, “Precinct with Bobby for shopping”, “To building society this
morning”, “Anne rang evening”, “Chops for tea.” Through the medium of shopping
lists, everyday communications, bills paid and payable, the WI Journal
faithfully records the beginning, middle and end of another unremarkable year
in the life of Mrs Mima Williams, 69.
Only 1988 was quite unlike any other year for Mrs Mima
Williams, 69, for this was the year she was dying of advanced stage, inoperable
lung cancer. This year, her last on earth, sandwiched between visits to the
precinct and the tearoom, acting as a grim parenthesis to trips to the post
office, the hairdressers, the butchers (did she see herself hanging in the
window? imagine the day she would be just another carcase lying cleaved on the
slab?) were endless hours in hospital waiting rooms; sitting in comfy
chairs feeling anything but comfortable as she watched her veins slowly fill
with useless chemotherapy - a sticking plaster on a gaping wound. The gradual
ebbing away of hope with each set of negative results. The quiet horror of mornings
spent in front of the mirror, carefully teasing newly unanchored strands of hair
from her head, strategically aligning the remains of her wash and set, powder-puffing
over the fear so she could face the world. The inedible chops congealing on the plate, scraped into the bin. The clink clink of the teaspoon on the
second-best china a metronome marking time in Death’s echoing antechamber. Sitting
alone in her first floor flat in the gathering dark, a candle flickering in a hurricane.
None of this is mentioned in the pages of that bastion of reliability,
the WI Journal 1988. the practical entries belie nothing but business as usual. Nowhere in the pages of
those doughty ladies is there a single entry saying, “I have no control over my
life anymore”, “my body is at war with me”, "my
grandchildren have already forgotten me”, “I am frightened”, “I am alone”.
On its final page, the WI Journal 1988 provides a space for
the diligent diarist to continue into the start of the next year. This section
has been left blank.
