Remembering Mum and Dad: All Soul's Day 1 November 2021

This a re-post from last year.  The sentiments are unchanged and always will be, but I've updated it to take account of the passage of time and the Pandemic.

Forget Hallowe'en.  

Despite all the trick or treating, crazy costumes and horror movies on the telly, here in Poland it's no more than a sideshow.  Thankfully the American obsession with it hasn't reached us, at least not to the same extent.  Indeed, the Catholic Church here, whose priests and nuns provide religious instruction in schools, in a country where First Communion and Confirmation are taken much more seriously than in many places (certainly than back home in Britain) openly and happily denounce Hallowe'en as being Evil, and encourage parents to ignore it and punish kids who join in the fun.  Mind you, they say likewise about the Easter Bunny and Father Christmas.  Which says a lot about the the shape of things here right now.....

No, the big day here is the next day, November 1st.  All Soul's Day.  The old religious festival - that has pagan roots rather than Christian - is the third most important day on the calendar, after Christmas Eve and Good Friday.

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Traditionally, people are expected, and indeed are taught from childhood, to remember and pay their respects to their deceased relatives.  This is done by visits to the graves of parents and grandparents, aunties and uncles, brothers and sisters and cousins who have passed away.  Parents take their children, and often travel the length and breadth of Poland to carry out these devotions.  All Soul's Day itself is a religious holiday with shops and businesses closed (their workers are obviously making their own observances).

Visitors do not only take flowers, as is the norm in the UK.  Far more predominant are the candles, of varying sizes and in a dazzling array of coloured and clear plastic vases.  Most graves end up with two or three bouquets and at least half a dozen candles.  By the end of the day, even the smallest and darkest cemetery is ablaze with the light from hundreds of candles. But Polish cemeteries, at least the city ones, tend to be huge affairs with thousands of graves spread across many acres, so you're talking tens of thousands of candles.  The light from them can be seen from some distance - I can remember flying in one All Soul's evening under a bright cloudless sky and being able to clearly see the patches of golden light that marked the cemeteries in many towns and cities  that we passed.  It's a beautiful and moving sight.

In fact, the whole event is that.  I don't consider myself in any away devout - I have my own set of beliefs that are a kind of Christianity, that I have come to over a lifetime and that comfort me - and do not belong to any recognised religion.  I was christened Church of England, though my teens attended a non-conformist Baptist chapel and ended up marrying two Catholic girls and attending Mass most Sundays (once the kids came along) but was never confirmed in either of the first two and never converted.  I'm not an atheist, but it would be difficult to classify me as Christian either.

Yet there is something comforting in standing at the various graves of my wife's departed, lighting our candle and placing it carefully amongst the others (we are never the first to arrive), then stepping back for some moments of quiet prayer and contemplation.  When the kids were small, my wife would lead them in some traditional Polish prayers and the kids would join in the genuflection and "Amen" conclusion.  I would listen in silence, as I still do, lost in my own thoughts.

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Every time I go back home to visit my sisters and sons and their families, I make a pilgrimage to my home town in Kent.  I've watched it change over the years: the High Street changes, more housing, more people, a one way system and traffic lights. But remaining constant are the graveyards in Church Street, the old one-time council estate where I was born.  In one of them my parents share a grave, with a grey marble headstone and edging, gravel base and flower pots.  Compared to some of the huge headstones that dominate Polish graves, its small beer indeed, but of course it means the world to me.

I clean it up, dispose of any old and dead flowers and weeds, give it a sweep, change the pot water and place my own bunch of chrysanthemums - my parents both loved the flower.  All the time I'm chatting to them, telling them what I'm up to, how the boys are (my dad died before any of them were born but mum was there for all three) and their families and children; I've introduced my two younger children, born and raised both Polish and English, when I took them to visit when they were smaller.  I get some funny looks from people who might pass (few and far between), but that's ok.  I don't pray, at least in the traditional and recognised way, but have a chat and thank my God for looking after them - it's the kind of informal prayer I learned in my Baptist teens and I'm comfortable with it. 

I went back recently, the first time in nearly three years, now COVID has abated somewhat - at least enough to allow travel (with some restrictions.  The town has changed little, and nor had the graveyard. But mum and dad's plot was badly in need of some care and attention, the headstone and surround and pebbles around the flower pots filthy dirty and covered in grime from three years or more of completely understandable neglect. I went to the nearest tap to get a can of water to at least try and spruce it up a bit, but there were no watering cans. A notice requested that mourners bring their own: an old lady passing by told me all the public ones had been stolen.  It made me very sad.

In the next, older part of the churchyard, are the graves of mum's mum, my aunt Rose and my cousin Taff, so I usually stop by and say hello to them as well.  It's all very low key, you could say typically British, but if gives me comfort.  Not in the least like a Polish All Souls Day devotion, which is a real family affair that fills the graveyard with visitors for probably the whole weekend.  I can't remember ever seeing more than a couple of people at any given time when I've been to see mum and dad.

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 My parents would both be over a hundred now were they still alive, both born when the First World War was at its height.  My dad, Wilf, was born in a very small village close to the Kent - Sussex border that has hardly changed since then - I went back a few years ago and it looked exactly as I remembered it in my childhood, when my elder sister lived there, and my late teens when my paternal grandmother died and was buried in the little churchyard there.  After leaving school at a probably young age (as was typical in poor - what would then be considered lower though I prefer the term "working class" - families) he went to work at the local castle as an under gardener.  The grounds were quite extensive and included a small lake in which he planted some water lilies that still proliferate today, even though the place is now owned by the National Trust.

There he met my mum, Floss, who had been born in a small town 6 miles or so away - my home town in fact.  She was working at the castle too - "In Service", was the job title.  Basically she was one of a staff of young boys ans girls who spent long hours cleaning, washing, ironing, peeling vegetables, waiting table, clearing up the mess - I knew it was hard work, but reading sections of Bill Bryson's excellent book "At Home" I have a much clearer picture of what that actually meant.  What you see in Downton Abbey or Upstairs Downstairs or any one of a dozen Merchant Ivory productions is a very sanitised and romanticsed alternate reality. It was really brutally hard work for next to no reward or what we recognise today as workers' rights.

Wilf and Floss met, somewhere, somehow, fell in love and married shortly before World War 2 broke out.  They lived in a small cottage in the castle grounds but had to leave that when dad signed up and marched off to war.  Mum was moved into a brand new council house and lived there for the rest of her life.  I was born there, the only son, with two elder sisters.  It was a struggle at first bringing up the girls on her own, but with the community spirit that existed then, all neighbours mucking in together, she got through it.

Dad, meanwhile, had a year in North Africa under Montgomery, part of the heroic Desert Rats that defeated Rommel's Afrika Corp and brought the area back into Allied control.  Job done? Not a bit of it: after a brief leave off he went again, this time to Burma, where he remained until 1946.  Yes, yes, I know the war ended a year earlier, but it seems there was still work to be done.....  He was wounded twice, neither seriously, met Vera Lynn, the Forces' Sweetheart when he was in hospital recovering from one of them (she spent a half hour chatting to him apparently.....he never forgot that, and it was a cherished memory until he died).  But he survived, and came home to a wife who was a stranger and two daughters who had no memory of him, and with no job and little money.  Like thousands of other young men - he was just 31.

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I can't imagine how they got through it all, rebuilt their relationship, stayed together in our little council house, made me, and brought up the three kids....  I don't think dad was ever paid more than about £25 a week, and he had a succession of jobs: a stoker at the local gas works, a coalman, a removal man, and finally for a number of years a mill operator in a plastics factory.  All dirty, hard jobs in polluting environments. Whether they led directly to the cancer that killed him at the age of just 56 (I was 19 at the time) is open to debate, and nothing can ever be proved now, but I suspect it did.

But he was a lovely man.  He was quiet and placid - possibly a result of some kind of PTSD after Burma? Who knows! - and never had a bad word to say about anyone.  I can't remember him ever raising his voice or getting really angry about anything.  He had an allotment that, with our big back garden, provided the best fresh fruit and veg I've ever eaten.  He smoked (which probably didn't help) and enjoyed the odd night out at the local men's club or British Legion with mum and their friends, veterans all.  A couple of brown ales and that was enough.  He saved my life twice when I very small, both near drownings, but made no fuss either time, and insisted on cleaning my football boots after every game, right up until the last couple of weeks of his life.  He was my hero.

Mum was my rock.  She was always there when I came in from school and refused to get any kind of job until I left school (then took one in a tobacconists and worked there until retiring a year or so before she in turn died of another cancer). She was more volatile and had a temper on her, far more so than dad, and ruled our home with a strong but kindly hand.  Neither her nor dad ever smacked me, as far as I can recall - not more than a tap on the arse anyway - but I was under no illusions about what was acceptable behaviour.  Discipline was gentle but effective.  She was a terrific cook (aren't all our mothers?), and I remember the most wonderful Victoria Sponge cakes, jam roly-polies and fruit cakes for Sunday tea or when we had visitors. I always had clean clothes freshly ironed (difficult I recognise now, as I was a messy kid and always came in from play with cowpat on my trousers, or split seams in my school uniform that needed mending overnight (without a sewing machine)......but she always managed somehow.  She was my heroine.

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I never mourned either of them properly, when they passed.  I was just a kid, fresh out of school, when dad died and in my first job.  Mum and my sisters were distraught so I took on the burden of arranging the funeral, sorting out his final payout from the factory, all that stuff, with the help of Brian Oman, the minister at the Baptist Church.  I didn't have a lot of time to mourn, and then as the main breadwinner had to stay strong for mum and and my sisters.  To help, I hit the drink for several years....... But I got through it.

Then when mum died, I had my own family to think about and stay strong for, for my kids were in their early teens and had been very close to mum.  Again, I had to make the funeral arrangements, then with the help of my brother-in-law sort out the house.  Mum had bought it as part of Thatcher's Right to Buy initiative, but my sister and he decided to move out so there was much packing to be done.  It took some time, and my own precarious work situation to handle (working for a highly aggressive US investment bank that insisted on long and unrelenting hours and didn't take prisoners) was also critical.  So I didn't really mourn her either.

But I missed them both, and still do, all these years later. Hence the annual pilgrimage to the grave that I missed the last couple of years.  The emotional dam finally broke, many years later.  I was ironing, the radio was on, and a particular song came on. There's a verse in there where the singer believes he heard his late father's voice in the cry of a new born son.....  That did it for me: the tears came, long and painfully, but at the end of it I felt much better.  I still can't listen to Mike & The Mechanic's "Livin' Years" without a tear in my eye though.

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They were good people, my mum and dad.