Debbie (Gilmour) Boyce, RIP.

‘Death begins when no one can remember you any longer.’

Reading is what I do. That’s a quote from a Fresh Water for Flowers, a book I recently read in which the main character is a cemetery keeper. I got a Facebook message from Biggins telling me Debbie was dead. I replied, I didn’t know any Debbies. Then I thought about it some more and sent another message, ‘Debbie Gilmour’?  

Her daughters Jasmine’s and Victoria’s Uncle Joe did the talking at the funeral for their family, which included a baby grandson. Wilma Biggins was Debbie’s pal. She died a few years ago, but there was a grim inevitability about it. Wilma wrote her own eulogy. She wasn’t there to read it, of course, but she reminded us she’d have done it much better. Urging her children when they saw only darkness to become the light. I can’t properly remember the rest.

 The same floral wreaths. Both were ‘Mums’. Debbie also a new grandmum. They lay inside their children’s lives and helped them rise. Helping hands. They were too young to let go. Debbie had buried her dad a few months ago. That was expected in the same way Pele’s death was expected. Debbie was around the same age as Ally McCoist is now. Her death was a tragedy. It wasn’t one of those funerals where he’d tell a funny story about her and everybody would laugh.

I must admit I like those stories. The crematorium seats 266 mourners. There wasn’t enough room. Over 300 mourners on a dreich day, all with their own stories of Debbie. I stood at the back next to Stan Henry. Debbie, he said, had babysat his and Anne’s son, Wullie.

  I hadn’t seen Debbie for years. Decades even. I didn’t know if she would recognise me. Kojak and Yul Brynner are usually the only people that are recognisably bald. And nobody knows who they are anymore. But she did. Jeez, she was working down my way in Dalmuir as a home help. God, could that woman cram twenty years into ten minutes’ conversation? Let’s stretch it to fifteen.

I walked up Mountblow Hill to her funeral. Debbie was always out marching along the canal from one job to another, out and about the back lanes of Whitecrook. She could easily have walked to the moon. Stephen, her eldest brother, used to run up Mountblow Hill barefoot. But he was just showing off. The Gilmours could afford Clarks shoes.

When Debbie was born a Daily Record cost 3d.  Their tribe of children Stephen, Gregor, Bonnie, Debbie and Darrel lived in a bought house behind us, the backdoor facing onto Shakespeare Avenue, which cost around ten grand. The Queen came to visit the Gorbals with Prince Philip. I’m not sure Debbie would have let Royalty in. Not because we were going to face the worst winter of the century, when birds fell from the sky with cold.  She’d a knack of closing rather than opening when she’d a mind to it. The wee shuggly bathroom window on our fingers, for example. Pushing us off the wall. When Cammy, Jim and me were trying to get into Summy’s house, when she was babysitting. Summy went to the school of hard knocks. Still in Primary school, he was left holding the baby. Janey had Down’s Syndrome.  Summy’s mum had a drink problem that defeated her, but we couldn’t defeat Debbie. Debbie helped out. We quickly learned, we weren’t going to get in her way whether we liked it or not.

We’d cram into Peppermint Park without a peppermint. Debbie Harry and Denise, Denise was the height of glamour. The café outside the Oasis where you could kid on you were an American kid that drank coffee and knew how to work the jukebox. Debbie Harry again.

I’m pretty sure that was where she met Boycey. He was an arsehole like the rest of us, but better at football than the rest of us together. I think I saw him a few weeks ago walking the dog. I passed him on the bike. Didn’t recognise him at first, because walking the dog was Debbie’s job, and I’m short-sighted.  

We’ve all got different jobs. Different stories. Different memories to pass on like a baton, because when we talk about the dead, we bring them into the living world. Writer Christian Bobin suggests ‘words left unspoken go off to scream deep inside us.’ Amen.