In Memory

One of my favourite pieces of poetry is by the US poet 

ee cummings; I carry your heart with me.

I carry your heart with me (I carry it in my heart)

I am never without it (anywhere I go you go, my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing, my darling)

I fear no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet)

I want no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)

And it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you.

Here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows higher than soul can hope or mind can hide) and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart.

I carry your heart (I carry it in my heart)

If you’ve read my previous blog post of my current northern hemisphere trip, you’ll know one of the main reasons for coming was to attend the winter Paralympics.  There were also a few other reasons, one of them being the promise I made to mum that when she died, I would take hers and my dad’s ashes to England and scatter them on my older sister’s grave.  Dad died in 2015, mum died in December, after ten years of living with MS related dementia, and so the surprisingly heavy boxes of ashes were packed in our carry-on bags and brought to England.

Mum and dad were left in the safe custody of relatives whilst my nephew and I set off for the Paralympics and our inter-railing adventure around Germany.  When we planned our trip a year ago, Ieper and Flanders were close to the top of the list. 

We arrived in Ieper after a very long train trip from Hannover, checked into our hotel and then walked around the corner to the Menin Gate.  The Menin Gate was inaugurated 99 years ago and from 1928, there has been a service of remembrance held at 8pm everyday.  Slots for the names of 55,000 Commonwealth servicemen were made but devastatingly,  so great was the loss of life, there is a second memorial at Tyne Cot for the names of almost 35,000 more servicemen.

It is difficult to describe the experience of the Menin Gate Last Post ceremony.  Sombre, moving, sad.  None of these words seemed adequate.  The feeling was visceral.  As I grappled with my experience, I realised it wasn’t about the senseless deaths of war.  It was about how the dead were remembered.  The sheer enormity of the job of painstakingly and carefully tracing the names of the 100,000 men who died with no known grave.  The work of the stonemasons who delicately, and precisely transferred them to the walls of the gate. What spoke to my heart most deeply though, was the commitment of the Last Post Association.  

The association was formed in 1928 from the local Ieper residents.  Ninety-eight years ago a group of individuals came together and made a commitment to commemorate the dead by playing the Last Post every single evening at 8pm. This commitment has been passed down from generation to generation and will continue to be passed down for time immemorial.

The area was full the evening I was there.  There were several school groups and there was a general hum of conversation, until the bugler unassumingly walked into the centre of the road, which is closed at 8pm every evening for the ceremony.  Silence.  As the haunting notes of that oh so familiar tune reverberated off the marble, every single adult, every single child stood in total silence.  Wreaths were laid by relatives of the dead and then just as suddenly as the silence fell, people started to chat, move away and cars moved through the gates again.  

The following day we spent the morning in the Ieper and Flanders museums because it was cold and raining heavily.  I’m not a huge fan of museums but these are brilliant.  Having been at the Last Post Ceremony the night before, the collation of the museum was even more meaningful.  There were many creative technical elements which brought the words of letters written long ago to life.  Particularly poignant for me was the story I had heard previously when on Christmas Eve both the Commonwealth and German soldiers sang Silent Night across the trenches and then played football together on Christmas Day in No Man’s Land before returning to their trenches carrying on with the orders their respective governments had set for them.

That afternoon, the rain eased so we set off, my nephew on a bike and me on Ruby, my Omeo wheelchair, to find the Welsh Memorial Garden and the Welsh Cemetery.  It was a desolate ride, dark clouds pregnant with rain hung over the fields and lanes.  The air was pungent with the scent of a mixture of rain, wind, manure and sodden earth, recovering from the icy winter.  The wind whistled as we rode along; our hands and faces frozen with the cold. The mud from the fields had transferred to the roads and our wheels splattered through it.

The garden and cemetery were quite a distance from Ieper town and as we rode along it was apparent that the trenches that had been built over 100 years before were still being used today but now repurposed as drainage canals for the farmers’ fields.  The Welsh cemetery is situated just inside what was the German frontline, just outside of it is a huge bomb crater.  There are 110 year old bomb craters everywhere in Flanders.  For the residents of Ieper, they don’t need a Last Post ceremony to remember the dead.  Nature’s memorials to the dead are literally in their gardens and paddocks.

We returned to the UK at the beginning of April and two days ago, we drove north to the town I was raised in, just south of the Lake District.  It will be a precious opportunity to catch up with friends over the next few weeks. This afternoon however we created time and space to honour my promise and scatter mum and dad’s ashes.  

We were a small but significant group and each of us brought our own experiences of my mum, dad and sister.  My aunt spoke, I read some bible passages, my friend’s father, a Lay Preacher at the church I attended as a child prayed.  I have been privileged to be present at the last words spoken by my sister, my father and my mother as well as my brother-in-law. I shared them with the group.  All of the words spoken were as individual as each person was.  Each life, just as precious as the other. My aunt and I scattered the ashes, each person present laid a rose on the grave, said a final prayer and then went together to the pub to share some drinks and stories.

Having experienced the death of so many friends and family from quite a young age, I have developed a bit of a philosophy about death.  I have views about the words we use; death and dying not passed away, passed on, passed over or just passed.  Death isn’t bland; death can be brutal, devastating, even a huge relief and I believe our language should honour the experience.  I believe children should be able to attend funerals as long as there is someone they trust, outside the immediate family, who can solely focus on caring for them.  I believe we should talk about the dead, we should celebrate their lives, we should have photos and memories scattered everywhere.  I believe that if we can, the living should take the hands of the dying, kiss them and walk with them to the gates of eternity.

When I think about our little ceremony this afternoon, I was taken back to my experience of Ieper.  The people of Ieper live with the memory of the dead every day.  They have built a memorial ritual into their daily lives.  They care deeply for the ancestors of the living, even those with no grave or no name.  The names of the dead are inscribed on the marble of the Menin Gate but they are also inscribed onto the hearts of every single person who makes Ieper their home.  They surely are the living who decide, everyday, to take the hands of the dying and walk them to the gates of eternity.

Here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows higher than soul can hope or mind can hide) and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart.

I carry your heart (I carry it in my heart)

I hope this reflection on death is helpful for someone who may be struggling with loss and grief and might help them in finding a way to carry their loved ones preciously in their hearts.

And as always, please share, you never know who might need a whisper of encouragement.

Angharad