Maureen Patricia Basilio (4 Jun 1937 - 5 Jan 2020)

In loving memory of Maureen Patricia Basilio who sadly passed away on 5th January 2020. The dearly loved wife of the late Ken Basilio, dear mum of Cath and Gail and mother-in-law of Geoff and Shaun, also, the much loved sister of Prim.

EULOGY
Maureen Patricia Basilio

Most of you know our mum because your lives overlapped with hers at some point, sometimes for a few moments and others for much longer. We knew her all our lives but are still discovering things about her life, hopes and dreams. Mum was always a writer so we thought we’d share some of her story.

Mum was born to Sergeant Ernest Edward Walpole and Kathleen Jesse Church on the 4th June 1937 in the RAF hospital at RAF Cranwell.

Mum grew up during the war which gave her great strength of character or what we call today the “war spirit”. Mum had some very lucky escapes she was very thankful she survived to tell us about them.

Mum’s Father was posted to RAF Seletar in Singapore just before the outbreak of World War 2 and mum remembered happy times there until the Japanese invasion in 1942. Her mother was carrying mum’s unborn sister Primrose when they escaped on an American naval warship Mum was just five years old. They’d been hiding in the storm drains while the Japanese bombed the harbour while waiting to board. Their ship narrowly missed being sunk by a torpedo that passed under the hull; theirs was riding higher in the water as it carried less civilians than some of the other ships, but not all evacuees were so lucky.
They finally arrived safely back in England in the middle of the war and eventually news came through that Grandad had managed to escape as well and had made it over to Australia.

After a while a home was found in Ramsgate for Grandma, Mum and the new baby, Primrose. Mum told us how a year later during an air raid a Doodle Bug exploded on the street 4 doors down killing and injuring neighbours.

At school, Mum was bright and could have continued with her education (she was interested in fashion and design), but asthma (that plagued her all her life) had already started and rather than take the polluting steam train to the grammar school mum got out in the fresh air riding her bike to work at the age of 15.

As a girl Mum was a member of ‘The Girls Friendly Society’ and it was probably through the society or school that she started her lifelong penfriend writings, a common hobby in those days.

When Mum left school, she worked in a furniture shop and then a year later on the hosiery counter at Marks & Spencer in Ramsgate. She loved it and made many good friends and stayed for 6 years. She went on an M&S visit to Calais and fun weekends away with the girls to Butlins in Scotland; yes, a long way from Ramsgate but perhaps that was the point!! Mum also got to show off her creative talents, and her good legs on the M&S carnival float each year.

It is a testament to the considered thoughtfulness of Mum’s letters, sent regularly, that gave rise to several enduring relationships.
Mum shared all her adult life with Marie in Minnesota, they exchanged hundreds of letters and parcels in the 67 years they were writing and most of Marie’s letters are still at Mum’s house. They are a remarkable record of two young women who became friends, then wives, then mothers and they were overjoyed to be able to meet each other later in life on two separate occasions, one was a holiday Mum won by collecting tokens from the milk.

Elizabeth was a lifelong friend who she met in RAF Hospital Wegburg, Germany, when Gail was born in 1970 when Dad was serving for the first time at RAF Laarbruch in West Germany. Mum and Elizabeth were on the same ward and Elizabeth had a daughter born on the same day as Gail, but after leaving the ward they never met again only sharing the events of their lives in letters.

Mum got to know Dad after responding to his request in ‘Picture Goer’ magazine for a penpal while he was in hospital recovering from a motorcycle accident. Those must have been good letters as Mum married him two years later and they went to Paris for their honeymoon. Dad was posted to Singapore shortly after, Mum was now married to the RAF as well and so it was in Singapore where Cath was born in 1962.

When in Germany for the second time Cath was over a hundred miles away at boarding school and Mums letters and parcels were gratefully received. Cigarettes, pot noodles and chocolate were the staple ingredients along with one of her usual letters about Dad, Gail and Lucky the cat.

Mum was intelligent and funny, she passed several O’ levels while Dad was stationed at Scampton. Witty with a sharp mind, a great communicator she was well read and well versed in a lot of subjects, as a neighbour remarked “I could talk to your mum about anything” music, geography, politics, history, literature, travel, if she didn’t know it she would read up on it. Mum engaged with people of all ages she was interested in people and places, a friend commented that when she first met mum they chatted comfortably to each other and that when you spoke to mum you never felt like a stranger. Mum often had very strong view points and didn’t shy away from a good healthy debate.

Family and the love of family was important to mum she was selfless, loving, thoughtful, generous and caring, and we feel so lucky to have had a mum so clever and inspirational. She celebrated our successes and comforted us in our failures; she supported us throughout life’s ups and downs.

Mum had a sense of fun and devilment and a mischievous glint in her eye sometimes in trouble in school and out of it, she used to go scrumping in the local orchards and tease her younger sister Prim. Sometimes Mum was sent out of class and made to learn poetry as her punishment, but it became something she loved. Mum joined an over 50’s exercise class that did wonders for her mobility and she made friends there, particularly her friends Barbara and Mary, she was amused to tell us how she and Barbara (who was 91 and mum was 80 at the time) sometimes messed about at the back of the class like a pair of naughty school children and got told off by the instructor.

As children we went on days out in the countryside with picnics mum had made that were fit for a king. She enjoyed family trips to the seaside, building sand castles with us and paddling in the sea, it often blowing a gale! We’d eat fish and chips (mum’s favourite meal) sometimes in the car if it was raining. Dad had won a caravan in Germany and we had some bracing seaside holidays in it. We swapped the caravan for the comparative luxury of a villa at Centre Parcs in Sherwood forest for nearly 20 years of family get togethers and Mum never forgot Geoff coaxing a swan into her bedroom to wake her up!

Mum was a great home baker and jam maker giving away lots of jars to family and neighbours. She taught us to cook and Mum’s cherry cake was our favourite, she made the perfect pancake and Shrove Tuesday was a family tradition at mums.

Mum squeezed many other things into her life; music, painting, drawing, and she got great pleasure from reading books and poetry, that time spent out of class was a blessing and she later had a poem ‘Poetically Speaking’ published in a book. ‘The Silver Swan’ poem became a favourite of Mum’s after Gail saw it when travelling on the London underground, Mum tracked down the book (simply called Poems on the Underground) and gave it to Gail for her 35th birthday where she had also highlighted the poem ‘To My Daughter’.

Bawtry became Mum’s home as Dad’s career in the RAF came to an end and thankfully so did all the moving packing and unpacking. It was here she was often seen down at her local library coming away with an armful of books. Her favourite author was Derek Tangye who wrote a heart-warming series, The Minack Chronicles, about escaping to a simple life in Cornwall with his wife Jeannie and running a daffodil farm after leaving successful careers in London. Mum fell in love with the stories of his life naming two of her cats after theirs - Felix and Cherry, Dad took Mum on a holiday to Cornwall to see the home Derek used to live in and the places he wrote so fondly about. That was a very special time for Mum; she took a cutting from a fuschia in his garden and when it grew some roots planted it in her own, we all knew it as the ‘Tangye’ fuschia.

Mum had a passion for flowers and gardening, she often spoke about how her mother used to tend their family garden and how beautiful it was. Roses were one of mum’s favourite flowers, every year for mum’s birthday in June her mother would place a vase of cut roses from the garden and put them by her bedside. Mum loved to see the flowers that came throughout the year and still mowed her own lawn this last summer before we knew she was poorly.

Mum’s exercise class organised outings (harking back to her M&S days) and a show at Penistone Theatre at the beginning of November was the last time Mum was out with her friends.

When Mum went into hospital they finally discovered a brain tumour, the consultant broke the news to her, Mum was very philosophical. She asked if it was cancer and the Consultant advised at that moment they were not sure and needed to seek further advice, to which Mum replied with good humour “If it looks like a rat and smells like a rat then it’s probably a rat!” and then asked if it was possible to view the scan with a “I want to see the bugger!” mums consultant remarked what an inspirational woman Mum was. Unfortunately, the tumour was affecting mum’s short term memory and the following day she could not remember what was wrong with her though she knew that something was.
Mum moved into a care home in Thorne near Gail and we were all grateful for some special Christmas moments together and for friends to visit.

As Mum became more tired, we started to read her her favourite Derek Tangye book, The Cherry Tree, a book she loved so much. Mums health declined rapidly and one night whilst reading to her Gail said in desperation “you can’t go anywhere Mum, we have to finish the book” we just weren’t ready to let her go.

On the night of Saturday 4th January Gail looked at mum, picked up the book and started to read the remaining pages. In the early hours of Sunday morning Gail finished reading mum The Cherry Tree and closed the book for the last time, at 4.23am the final chapter of mum’s life had come to an end.