Opinion

William Scholes: A strong woman returns home

William Scholes

William Scholes

William has worked at The Irish News since 2002. His areas of interest include religion and motoring.

Elizabeth Scholes being interviewed by her great-grandson Isaac Scholes for a school project in 2017
Elizabeth Scholes being interviewed by her great-grandson Isaac Scholes for a school project in 2017 Elizabeth Scholes being interviewed by her great-grandson Isaac Scholes for a school project in 2017

THE idiosyncrasies of deadlines and publishing schedules mean columns like this are inevitably read out of their time of writing.

This, for me anyway, is itself a step removed from that moment when the essence of an idea emerges and starts to percolate from thick skull through to keyboard-fingers.

The dislocation behind the contribution dripped on to the page before you today feels especially acute, and not only because it's Saturday afternoon as I write.

Under normal time-shifting circumstances, I might have crafted 650 words on the children, my 10-year-old son among them, who will receive their transfer test results tomorrow.

Competition is tough, but is there a more enduring tribute to the monumental uselessness of Stormont than its failure to reform education?

The return of the executive is itself column-worthy. It seems to be more or less the same unapologetically dysfunctional outfit as before, with an added dose of begging bowl truculence; less New Decade, New Approach than Old Whine, New Whineskins.

There was a fascinating intervention from Sammy Wilson, who told Conor Murphy to stop moaning and get on with it because the parties had agreed the lengthy, imaginative and expensive wish-list.

Readers with a long memory may - perhaps with a shudder - recall that Mr Wilson is almost uniquely qualified to point out when the emperor is wearing no clothes. For the avoidance of doubt, I am referring to his own tenure as finance minister.

But these and other half-formed ideas will have to wait.

My Grandmother, deep into her 97th year, died on Friday night.

Though not the biggest woman, Elizabeth Scholes was the strongest woman. She had to be. Illness stole her husband far too soon, leaving her to raise four small boys, widowed and alone.

Tragedy's spectre called again when one of those sons died in a car crash. Little wonder melancholy swam beneath the surface, or that tears would breach the dam holding a reservoir of memories, loss and dreams.

If strength of character and bloody-minded stubbornness are two sides of the one coin, then Granny's purse was stuffed with them.

Possessed of a work ethic to shame Hercules, she was also armed with an unwavering belief that one should always try to better oneself through one's own efforts. Who else was going to do it?

That same ethic was instilled in her sons and passed on to my generation. I hope we can pass it to the next. It's what she would expect.

Gardening was a passion, for which she won awards. Granny wouldn't have collected any prizes for her driving, however; I used to tell her that she parked by Braille, her car's bodywork a litany of bumps and scrapes as a result of manoeuvring until she touched something.

A fine cook, she would think nothing of putting her own unorthodox twist on traditional favourites.

Sunday dinner became a game of 'Russian roulade'; it might have looked like a steak pie, but was it in fact a chestnut and olive pie travelling incognito?

A glut of plums brought the dawn of a memorable culinary epoch - it included at least two leap years - during which Granny served every type of dish involving plums, including some still to be discovered.

She had, as the euphemism goes, 'slowed down' in recent years.

By Christmas, it seemed as if the old fire had gone, though the occasional spark kept the embers glowing. Eventually they too dimmed, until the last one faded out altogether.

This week we brought Elizabeth on her final earthly journey, home to Fermanagh soil and the husband she lost so young, so long ago.

It was an emotional day. But Granny was also a woman of Christian faith, so it could be faced in the assurance that she had already gone ahead of us, called by her Maker to the heavenly home where there is no pain and no tears.