Peace in the Park

Life after Death.

Last night I could smell my late mother’s perfume. She had an old rusty tin of Tweed talc. The only makeup she wore was kohl. It accentuated her dark eyes. I remember the smell of Nivea on her skin. She had rough calloused hands and kept her fingernails short.

‘I bet you wish you had a beautiful mother, one without a big nose.’,

she’d say to me when I was small.

I did wish she had long hair like the other hippy women we knew. I wondered why she cut hers short. I remember sitting on the knee of a mousey haired young woman in the commune kitchen, gazing up at her face and long hair. I couldn’t wait for my babyish curls to grow long and straight. I wanted to tuck silky curtains behind my ears like her.

‘My mummy says nose rings are common!’,

I announced one day, hands on hips to another woman we knew. Mum and the other grown ups raised their eyebrows and laughed. In those days, it was very unusual for a white person to have a nose ring. Kids say such incongruous things sometimes.

Mum was a fair bit older than my stepdad. When I asked how they met, she told me they’d held hands at an encounter group and that she just knew he was the one. Later I found out she’d asked the other women if they had designs on him. When they said no, she made her move. Neil told me they’d been to the same party one night and that Mum had invited him home. A shy working class man from Barking, he no doubt found Mum alluring. He fell in love with her beauty and strength. He wove us colourful bead bracelets on his homemade loom. She cooked him roast dinners and cut his hair. I wanted to marry him.

‘How old will you be when I’m a grown up?’, I once asked.

‘Oh about 50’ he replied.

‘Will you wait for me?’ I said. He smiled. I loved him. I never called him Dad but I adored him. He was patient and kind. I remember locking myself in the bathroom after a terrible row with Mum. I couldn’t stop crying and had ‘the jumps’. Neil knocked gently on the door and I let him in. He sat next to me on the floor.

‘My throat hurts.’ I gulped.

‘Breath deeply’ he said.

Here at the UEA I find myself surrounded by young people. But my people are dying. My mother is dead, my stepdad’s passed on, my biological father died suddenly last year. Life is but a walking shadow... I want to preserve their stories and the stories of their chosen tribe. I feel their lives dissipate like mist. Am I sentimental? Should I let go and stop grasping onto the past? Am I afraid of what the future holds? Undoubtably.

I explain to a friend’s husband that I want to write down the unrecorded tales of the pioneering culture into which I was born, before it’s too late.

‘There are loads of different types of counterculture’ he says, ‘what makes your family’s story so special?’

Take care of yourself, this is deep work you are embarking on.

Husband sends me pictures of flowers to cheer me up. An old friend cooks me nice dinners and makes me laugh. Close friends send me morale boosting messages. Try to focus on good people. Treat it like a job. Hang on in there. Don’t give up.

I look for beauty in the park. I place one foot in front of the other and head for sanctuary. The public library, the kitchen I share with kind strangers, prayerbooks, podcasts about post nuclear peace.

I’m unused to organising myself. I have too many books and several pairs of glasses. I feel old.

‘Nothing great is ever achieved without much enduring.’, so said St. Catherine of Siena.

Every Sunday I light a candle for Mum. We went to Mass here together when one of my nieces got married years ago. As we stood in front of the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, Mum pointed to a prayer written down on a piece of laminated card by the railing.

‘I want that prayer said at my funeral.’

I made a careful note.