Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift.
So, we all live our lives. Sometimes a memory will intrude. I let the good ones in. Tadcu picking me up and swinging me around [he died in 1970]. Gil and his jokes-“How can you tell if an elephant’s been in your fridge? Footprints in the butter.” The outside toilet [complete with resident spiders]. The huge gooseberry bush whose berries we would cram in our mouth-Haribo Sours are for amateurs. The ice cream parlour and the slag heaps that even after Aberfan loomed over the village. Mamgu cooking and knitting and always making sure everyone else was comfortable.
Mamgu, Me, Dad, Gil and Tadcu 1967
Anything else was pushed out. Sometimes I would read a story in a newspaper about a man who had killed his mother, his wife, his girlfriend, his children. How I loathed them. What monsters. Any vision of Gil and his kindness and laughter was quickly dismissed. I won’t think about that now.
My lovely Mum died in 2020. We spent a lot of time together the last few years. She lived almost exclusively in the past. Her own mother Irene had died when Mum was 13. The wound that never heals.
Me, Mum and Dad, 1967.
I realised how little, I knew and how few people were left that I could talk too. Dad wasn’t ready and probably never would be. I turned to libraries and archives and started working.