The Old Hack

As my late father gave me an appreciation of France and most things French, so my mother contributed greatly to my love of words and expressions.  At school in the nineteen thirties, she learned whole poems by heart which she recited to me during my childhood and which she continued to remember right up until her final months in this world.  They ranged from the rhythmic “Cargoes” by John Masefield through some of the doggerel of John Betjeman (if I may be so dismissive of a poet laureate) to the dark and brooding, almost psychotic “Jealousy” by Rupert Brooke and taking in the delightful nonsense of Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear somewhere along the way.

 I should say straight away that my mother was not so cruel as to read me “Jealousy” in my formative years – I was not aware that she knew this by heart until the very year of her death, when she was rehearsing a poetry reading and was unsure of a line, asking me to check it out on the internet for her.

My mother, unlike my father, was not one to show her emotions.  Although she was known to succumb to an occasional belly laugh and taught me more vulgar jokes than I care to remember, she remained a private and undemonstrative person, sometimes quite cold.  Now that I reflect on her life and death I can see that the range of poetry she so keenly devoured was perhaps, in some way a substitute for her own anger, grief, sorrow and even happiness. 

Mother died nearly a year ago at the age of 88.  At her request, her ashes were scattered last week at Newby Bridge, Cumbria – a spot very dear to both her and my late father and which he had immortalised in a painting which once hung on the family wall in Portsmouth and now graces my office here in France.

The event was attended by her grandchildren, her three great grandsons and her favourite nephew.  We enjoyed a family lunch in beautiful Spring sunshine, having said our private goodbyes in our own ways and according to our various beliefs (on reflection, probably as eclectic as her collection of remembered poetry)

As my mother’s ashes floated down into the river, I would like to have had the composure to recite an appropriate poem.  I could neither bring one to mind nor remain calm enough to have done such a poem any justice.  Today, thinking of my mother and father in some spiritual way reunited after nearly a decade, I dedicate this poem by one of my own favourite writers to both of them: 

if there are any heavens my mother

if there are any heavens my mother will(all by herself)have

one. It will not be a pansy heaven nor
a fragile heaven of lilies-of-the-valley but
it will be a heaven of blackred roses

my father will be(deep like a rose
tall like a rose)

standing near my

(swaying over her
silent)
with eyes which are really petals and see

nothing with the face of a poet really which
is a flower and not a face with
hands
which whisper
This is my beloved my

(suddenly in sunlight

he will bow,

& the whole garden will bow) 

ee cummings 

 (Martha) Marion Morley  b. 28.05.1920  d. 04.06.2008