The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there. But sometimes it's still nice to go there

My dad died on Halloween and he was cremated on Bonfire Night.  That's the sort of fact that sounds made up, but in my case it was true.  He died in 1974.  I know it's true because I was helping my mum look through some papers yesterday, and I found his death certificate.  I also found the death certificates for my mum's parents.  They were both born before the First World War, and they both died in the 80s.  These were the only grandparents I knew as my dad's parents both died before I was born.  My grandma couldn't bend her legs much because of arthritis and my grandad developed schizophrenia after jumping out a window.  All the time I knew them they were old.  There's a little bit more info about the two of them here

My first wife died on the 12th day of Christmas 1998.  That was 16 years ago today.  She was 34 when she died.  She lived for 2 years and 2 months after being officially told she was terminally ill.  She used to say that she was living with cancer, not dying from it.  I guess we're all dying from something, even if it's just life itself, so that's probably a good attitude.  She spent 70 nights in hospital between 1995 and 1997 and also 23 nights in Butterwick Hospice before she died, but in between that we used to go out as much as possible.  She never let being ill stop her going anywhere, if it was at all possible to go.  I can remember standing in the queue with her at the Showcase Cinema while she was carrying a cardboard sick bowl, and I think she had pyjamas on under her coat, but we went anyway.  She got a wheelchair towards the end of her life too, and we used to go to the coast a lot I remember.

I wanted to sell her car at one point, but she insisted on keeping it for when she got better.  And her last ditch attempt to stay alive involved a journey by mobile home to see a tele-evangelist in Italy.  Even though she couldn't walk at the time, she insisted on taking her driving shoes and being put on the insurance so she could drive on the way back.  There's more about that trip here

I guess I've thought about that time more recently, because I've been once again hanging out in the cancer ward, this time with my mum, and also prior to moving house, I found a lot of old papers and photographs in the loft, including some stuff I wrote about her illness while it was happening.  Somehow re-reading that made me both sad and happy at the same time.

I've been visiting the past a lot lately.  I've been going back to Leeds a lot to see my mum, and on one journey I went to see the 3 houses I lived in between ages 3 and 22.  On another trip I went to see all my old schools.  The rugby pitch I used to play on now has a cycle path through the middle.

On one visit I also went to see the shop which was both where my brother was born (1972) and my dad died (1974).  The thing that struck me most about those places was that they were quiet, and that the birds were singing when I got there.  It felt to me at the time that the past can't hurt me, because wherever it is, and however good or bad it was, it's gone now.  The present is all that's left.  And that will be gone soon too, so I better make the most of it.

Then yesterday I took my mum out for Sunday dinner, to the pub she used to go to with my dad 40 years ago, and which she hasn't been to since.  Inside it still looks like the 70s and they were playing Abba and Neil Sedaka songs, amongst other things.

She reminisced a bit about going there with dad, who she said was always the life and soul of the party, and about friends she used to go there with, who are now also dead.

And all this thinking about the past, and reflecting on loved ones who are now gone, made me think of a quote I'd read somewhere.

Some day soon, perhaps in forty years, there will be no one alive who has ever known me. That's when I will be truly dead - when I exist in no one's memory. I thought a lot about how someone very old is the last living individual to have known some person or cluster of people. When that person dies, the whole cluster dies,too, vanishes from the living memory. I wonder who that person will be for me. Whose death will make me truly dead?” ― Irvin D. Yalom, Love's Executioner and Other Tales of Psychotherapy

Well, as far as my wife and my dad and my grandparents go, that time is not yet.  I remember them still, and even though sometimes thinking of them makes me sad, it also makes me happy too.  Happy to have known them, and to remember the time I spent with them.

My dad was called Jack, my grandparents were Alan and Lilian, and my wife was called Beverley.  They died in the 70s, the 80s and the 90s respectively.  A part of each of them still lives on in me, and I'm hoping to keep it that way for a very long time.  I'm not in any rush to join them just yet.