Synopsis:
This work is a personal reflection of death and my attitude to it, which is one tinged with delightful memories. It starts with the death of King George VI of England in 1952 and ends with the death of his wife, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother in 2002. In between it takes in family members, the famous and the not so famous that have departed this world through my lifetime. It reflects my obsession with obituaries and ages in parenthisis.
SAMPLE
'Bittersweet Memories of Death and Delight: A personal reflection.'
My Dad (aged 58)
1965 marked the real beginning of my teen years. Never much of a Beatles fan I nevertheless managed to lose my innocence on the kitchen floor of a friend’s house while ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ played in the background. I’m sure Sir Paul would be amazed that his rendition was remembered for such a reason, but I’m probably not the only person in the world with such a memory of a Beatles’ tune.
I was much more into the Rolling Stones and the Animals, hard rock and blues with some jazz thrown in for good measure. It was the time of Mods and Rockers who rampaged across the beaches at Brighton, and a time when many of the friends I knew were locked up for fighting, or killed on the roads when their motorbikes crashed.
My next-door neighbor, a kid I went to school with, owned a Lambretta scooter and lost both kneecaps when he hit a car making an illegal turn, he spent several weeks in hospital. It is an ugly thought that I hardly remember their names now, although one or two are remembered for more obscure reasons.
My friend Dawn, for example, who came with me to the local dance on Saturday nights while we were teenagers and died, (aged 42), from a brain hemorrhage while sitting in a hospital emergency room waiting to be seen by a doctor, and another friend Eric, lost his brother and father who were killed together in an industrial accident leaving him alone in the world. And then there was my father.
I can still smell his mixture of smoke and sweat, or feel the way his cheeks were, just after he had shaved. He was not a tall man, but stocky and solid. A man you could love and one you could trust.
It’s hard to remember how he looked after all this time, I have photos of course. He always had his coat and hat on, even when sitting on the beach while my siblings and I, in various states of undress, paddled about in the sea.
He was always working, at his job, on his garden, up at the churchyard where he cut the grass with a large scythe that he sharpened with a long black honing stone. He was always finding things and bringing them back to show us, flint stones shaped like arrow heads, roman coins, and pieces of pottery. We had a large collection that my mother gave away at some point.
I used to enjoy going to the pub with him, first when we were small he would take us with mother to sit in the pub garden and bring us glasses of lemonade and bags of crisps on a tray, while he had his pint inside. Then, when I was earning money, I would love to buy him a pint of his favorite tipple and sit with him while he played cards with others at the pub, occasionally he would join us at the dart board for a game of 501.
He never learned to read music but could play a variety of instruments. He had a harmonica (he called it his mouth-organ) and a whistle box accordion that my brother now keeps and we had a piano that my mother took a sledgehammer to when she wanted to get rid of it.
There was a social club where he worked, and throughout the year club members collected money for a kids Christmas party and each year they would pay for us all to go to the seaside. They hired a coach and we went for the day to Great Yarmouth or Lowestoft or Hemsby, every year a different place but always the same people. Dad would get out his mouth organ and we would sing along to wonderful tunes to pass the two or more hours there and back.
There was always great excitement about who would first catch sight of the sea as Dad would give the winner a sixpence to spend. Mother would pack us sandwiches that we ate on the beach and they were always full of sand so for years I believed egg sandwiches should be crunchy, then we would have fish and chips in the local ABC restaurant before getting back on the bus for the return journey, they were the best fish and chips in the whole wide world in my opinion.
The day he left us I was at a Tupperware party. I had moved out of the family home by then but had gone back to visit the day he had his first heart attack and I had run to the public phone box to call for the doctor. He was in the local hospital for a week and I went twice a day to see him.
The party with my friends had been planned for weeks and everyone told me I should go as Dad was well on the way to recovery. He came to me while I was there, and said ‘goodbye and take care, I’m off now’ just like he was going for a walk or something. I knew he was dead and looked at my wristwatch, it was just after eight o clock and I started to cry. The other girls stopped talking and looked at me in amazement when I told them my Dad had just died. Only my sister believes me.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
POETRY SAMPLES
My poetry is usually short verse that deals with death which I associate with the color blue. It reflects things personal and in nature that have affected me emotionally. This first example is from a dream of drowning that I often experience and the second is about a friend who was almost strangled to death by her boyfriend.
For I am Mad
And death came to me, and took me by the hand
And walked with me, back, to the meadows of my youth
That were lush and green, and bathed in a yellow sea
And there was a breath of wind across my face
And a golden angel came to us and walked beside us all the while
Until we reached the shore and there rose up and watched us from above
And death, forever with me, took me then
And pulled me down beneath the sea
And we swam far and wide among the creatures of that place
And death, elusive now, left me there alone
And I panicked in my mind
But death came to me once more and held me tight
And death swept me up and over with the waves
Where I landed, softly, like a fairy, on the sand
For I am mad
The Lover
The strangling hold, the grip a vice
and air restricted now.
What cause to murder so?
The eyes like glass
the temples pulse
and breath, hot, short and sharp.
The body limp
blue face blue eyes.
Erection stiff and hard.
He plunders now
this body weak
and seeks out his revenge
The love that was
like life, extinct
and death succeeds once more.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
