We were much closer to our mother's side of the family. And particularly close to our mother's twin sister, Auntie Kitty, and her husband, Maurice. They lived a few streets away from us in Gabalfa. Their eldest son, my cousin,emigrated to New Zealand. After Uncle Maurice died of cancer, Auntie Kitty was left to rear her youngest son alone. There was no doubt that as well as being my mother's twin, she shared some of her characteristics, "eccentricity" being one of them, for want of a more suitable euphemism. She became convinced that the adjoining neighbours were "raking the grate" to purposefully annoy her. So, she raked back, with her wonderful high-pitched laughter. The garden became a lingering reminder of her husband, with whom the latter years had been spent in aggressive confrontation, over what we never really knew, although there were hints. So, the garden was demolished. The rose-covered trellis was torn down. The plants were uprooted. The weeds grew and consumed the vegetable garden.
Then, things generally deteriorated. And, as they did, the windows were covered up with newspaper and cardboard. And the photographs were burnt. The pictures and ornaments began to disappear. The model ship was thrown out. And the Japanese teapot. And so forth.
I think that in order to survive somewhat intact, she looked at the world as her enemy and brandished a sword at it. Her younger son grew up and got married and went to live in the south of England. In her later years, she went to stay with them, but missed Wales, and came back and stayed for the remainder of her life in a nursing home in Penarth.
But that little vignette omits the years that my sister, already tending to my mother's needs and bringing her home from the hospital every other weekend, was also looking after Auntie Kitty, who stayed with my sister and her husband for some time.
With her husband gone, and both sons living away, she was alone. And one day it jst became too much for her and she arrived at my sister's door in tears, and sobbed that she was lonely.
My sister, Mother Earth, took our beloved Aunt in and never let go of her after that, except when she went to live with her son and daughter-in-law in Cornwall, and when she went to the nursing home in Penarth.
I, personally, have a lot to thank my Auntie Kitty for. When I left home, she took me in again, although she was afraid of my father's wrath. She and my sister were the only two peole in the world who loved me and whom I loved. I pitied my mother, and resented my father. Those emotions cloud out any vestige of love of parent.