A Funeral for my Mother

Sally Case

On Thursday 16 July 2015, we held a funeral for my mother at Bramcote Crematorium, Nottingham. We were given the 45 minute slot from 10:30, which allowed us just over half an hour to do what we needed. The funeral direction was respectful and dignified. There were flowers. A small congregation assembled. I led the cortege into the chapel, some piano music from Einaudi being played over the public address system.
The coffin containing my mother's remains was placed on the catafalque, along with a tasteful floral tribute. This was the closest I had been to my mother in over thirty years. I gave an oration in place of a eulogy. My brother said a few words. All too soon my brother signalled the closing of the catafalque curtains, and we processed out of the chapel to my choice of In Paradisum from Fauré's Requiem. We greeted and thanked the mourners, and invited them to join us at a local public house, although only two did. It was over. The life of a person was packaged and dispatched in 45 minutes.

What follows here is the oration I delivered, but with the addition of music, photographs and text [in red] of elements that would have made the funeral much richer, albeit a good deal longer. A simple funeral programme, illustrated with the photograph above, gave some of the readings below.

------

[Einaudi piano music: Le Onde]

[Cortege enters chapel]

My name is Peter Hughes. I am one of Sally’s two sons. My brother, Carl, is also with us. I regret that Sally’s two daughters, Lisa and Rachel, are unable to be here in person. [I am grateful] to my two sisters, Lisa and Rachel, and to my brother, Carl, for helping me to construct the following account of the first 45 years of Sally’s life, [and for helping me to piece together something of the ensuing thirty years.]

I should like to begin by thanking you for coming here today. The purpose of our gathering is to pay our last respects to the person most of you will know as Sally Case, to say our good-byes, and to remember her life.

This is a time of transition, certainly for those us who knew Sally, and, depending on your beliefs, for Sally herself. Some of our tasks are to accept the reality of Sally’s death; to acknowledge our feelings about Sally, and the fact that she is no longer with us; to make appropriate adjustments to our lives in the light of her death; and to find ways to incorporate our memories of Sally into our ongoing life. Whilst the intention of this address is to help us all today with the latter of these tasks, trying to make sense of her life, I have little doubt that I shall be engaged on some of the tasks for the rest of my life.

Although the Sally I knew believed in ghosts and disembodied spirits, she was neither a formally- nor a piously-religious person, nor were most of the people in her life, so a religious funeral would seem quite out of place. It is not the place of this short funeral to challenge your spiritual beliefs. If you believe that something of a person survives their death, then Sally might have agreed with you. If you believe in past-lives, I doubt that Sally would have disagreed. I think that she might even have flirted with ideas of re-incarnation, but I am not sure. Whatever your beliefs, they mean something to you, so hold onto them. For what it is worth, I am an existentialist by disposition, a Quaker by convincement, and a lifelong atheist.

The structure of this funeral service will be simple. I have prepared an address that I shall read out. After which there will be a short period of silence for quiet reflection, or prayer, if that is your thing. My brother Carl has a few things he wishes to say. After a further brief period of silent reflection, we shall leave the chapel. It is our intention to meet at the Admiral Rodney public house after the service where it might be nice to spend a little while talking with you in a more convivial atmosphere.

Ecclesiastes chapter 3, verses 1 to 8:

To everything there is a season,
    a time for every purpose under heaven:

2     a time to be born, and a time to die;
    a time to plant, and a time to uproot what is planted;
3     a time to kill, and a time to heal;
    a time to break down, and a time to build up;
4     a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
    a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
5     a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones;
    a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
6     a time to gain, and a time to lose;
    a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
7     a time to tear, and a time to sew;
    a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
8     a time to love, and a time to hate;
    a time of war, and a time of peace.

Let us begin by spending a few minutes in silence, reflecting on the purposes and meanings we give to our life and to the lives of others around us; and also to our memories of Sally.

[Five minutes of silence]

Sally Cooper: 1939-2015

Sally was born on 8 February 1939, the only child of Harold Hawkes-Cooper and Dora Bilton. Her parents were never married to each other. Her father, Harold, had never formally divorced from a previous marriage from which he had a son and a daughter, although by the time Sally was on the way, Harold’s son, Dennis,  had emigrated to Australia, and his daughter, Amber, had been adopted. It was only later in her life that Sally chose to mention that she had a half-sister whom she had never known. Harold had led quite a colourful life which included a failed attempt at relocating to the USA when he was 21, owning a plant nursery in Sussex, a plant-hunting expedition to Malaysia, a failed attempt to relocate to Argentina, and working as a keeper at London Zoo. He was declared bankrupt at least once. Other Cooper Victorian forebears were stockbrokers and vicars, and one married the daughter of a Maori chief.

Despite her parents not being married to each other, Sally’s surname was recorded as Cooper on her birth certificate. She had no middle name, although I remember Sally occasionally telling people, with some humour, that a dental practice she attended insisted on Sally having a middle initial B. When she married my father, John, she gave her maiden name as Bilton. The Bilton family history was steeped in stolid Methodism with many of Dora’s direct family and ancestors being ministers. Dora had struck out from home in the 1920s and worked as private secretary to Walter Ayles, a Labour MP for Bristol North.

from Pinkle Purr by A.A. Milne

Tattoo was the mother of Pinkle Purr,
A little black nothing of feet and fur;
And by-and-by, when his eyes came through,
He saw his mother, the big Tattoo.
And all that he learned he learned from her.
'I'll ask my mother,' says Pinkle Purr.

Tattoo was the mother of Pinkle Purr,
A ridiculous kitten with silky fur.
And little black Pinkle grew and grew
Till he got as big as the big Tattoo.
And all that he did he did with her.
'Two friends together,' says Pinkle Purr.

War having been declared against Germany little more than six months after her birth, Sally entered the world in turbulent and uncertain times. It could be said that she lived her entire life as though needing the drama and chiaroscuro of those first embattled years. Sally was born in the bustling Sussex seaside town of Hove. The family soon moved away to the safety and loneliness of Anglesey. Sally’s parents worked ‘in service’ to Lord Boston, Dora working in the house, Harold as a gardener, chauffeur and master of the hounds. It may have been here that Sally acquired an early familiarity with garden plants that stayed with her throughout her life. However, it may also have been the experience of her parents working ‘in service’ that engendered a tension within Sally. Both her parents were from respectable middle-class families, and on her father’s side, albeit a long time in the past, there had been fabulous wealth. Just as the humble Tess Durbeyfield was seduced by the noble background of her D’Urberville forebears, Sally was never content to see herself as the daughter of impoverished parents working ‘below stairs’, and derived much satisfaction from associating with wealthy, high status people, yet paradoxically she also found middle-class values, such as deferred gratification and the importance of education, difficult to accept.

After the Second World War the family moved back to London. Tragedy must have loomed increasingly darkly for several years as her father increasingly manifested the symptoms of Parkinsonism. He died when Sally was only 14 years old, a loss she never forgot, and perhaps from which she never fully recovered. However, her middle teenage years were also heady times, for they coincided with the cultural emergence of the teenager. Sally revelled in the popular music of the 1950s, including rock-and-roll, and the songs of Frank Sinatra and Shirley Bassey. She worked as an usherette in a cinema and fell in love with the movies, especially musicals, watching High Society scores of times. I remember that she liked the song Moon River, sung by Audrey Hepburn in the movie Breakfast at Tiffany’s. 

[Moon River, Audrey Hepburn]

She also associated with a motor-cycle gang in north London, and later told stories about how she would roar off on the back of a bike at great speed into the night. Sometime in 1956, a Jewish friend, David Bernard, introduced Sally to a friend of his girlfriend, Marion. David and Marion later married. The friend-of-a-friend was John Hughes.

[Peggy Sue, Buddy Holly]

John had recently been discharged from National Service in the Royal Marines. He had been stationed in Cyprus where a terrorist group were fighting for independence. To Sally, this sounded excitingly masculine. However, John was not a tearaway: he was steady and thoughtful. Like Sally, he came from a family whose forebears had seen better times. Like Sally, John’s parents were not married to each other. Like Sally, John no longer had a father, although John’s father was still alive, just in another relationship that excluded John. I was the inevitable result of the too-swift romance, and was born the following year, Sally a mere 18 years of age. However, unlike their respective parents, John and Sally decided to marry, in a London registry office.

They found themselves a bedsit (a studio apartment as it would now be called) in Palmer’s Green, north London. To accompany the bawling infant they acquired a small dog. I do not know if Sally had lived with pets until that point, but subsequently she rarely lived without a dog, or sometimes a cat. Indeed, her rescue dog, Anna, survives her now.

John Hughes on his wedding day

At the same time that John Osborne was enjoying Broadway success with Look Back in Anger, a play that places angry young people in dingy flats in post-war Britain, it is hard to imagine that John and Sally were especially contented with the stark realities of their new life. Within a few months, my brother Carl was on the way, and John and Sally moved back into John’s mother’s house in Dollis Hill, Willesden, north west London. This move caused considerable rancour between John and his brother, Mike, precipitating what would become a family rift that healed only on John’s death in 1992.

At the turn of the twentieth century, Dollis Hill was a pleasant, prosperous and highly-desirable London suburb. However, like John and Sally’s forebears, it had declined in status, and had become cheap enough for poor Irish immigrant families to make their home, along with people who had sailed into Britain on the Windrush. I remember Sally’s friend, Renate, a German woman living alone in a bedsit just up the road: only 15 years after the end of the Second World War, German people were still commonly viewed with suspicion. Sally would occasionally come out with Yiddish (German Jewish) phrases, and make lokshen pudding, a simple, traditional Yiddish dairy noodle pudding. Sally, Carl and I would also spend time round at the Bernard’s house. In other words, Sally was comfortable mixing with people of various cultures and nationalities. I should also add that a man called Henry, a friend of my father, would come round to the house sometimes, or we would visit him. I now recognise that Henry was gay, an orientation that troubled neither of my parents, years before being gay was decriminalised.

[Fly Me To The Moon, Frank Sinatra]

It can’t have been easy for Sally living in the same house as her mother-in-law. Moreover, John, who attended evening classes to improve his education so that he could get a better job, proved to be too steady for Sally, too reliable, too unexciting. So in 1962, Sally left us and went to live with another man, and then at the end of the summer decided to return. I still remember the reconciliation meeting because it was the first occasion on which I was permitted to taste the fizzy drink Seven Up, such are the memories of children.

John was a man of principle and conviction, and lost his job more than once in those early years, so we never had much money. I think that the family was seriously poor. For example, it was not until 1966 that we first had a television, and only at the end of the 1960s that a telephone was installed. On Sundays we would often visit Sally’s mother, Dora, and her partner Maurice, who now lived in Aylesbury where Dora was the daily cleaner at the family home of the Weatherheads, a well-to-do family who owned the famous bookshop in the town. Dora also played the piano for a children’s ballet class. Sally never found it easy to get on with her mother. On a lighter note, John and Sally would occasionally take my brother and me on a picnic to Chorleywood Common, or to Kew Gardens, in Richmond, Surrey. Mostly, however, Sally would simply take us for a walk in nearby Gladstone Park. Occasionally we would visit an art gallery or museum together, and Sally retained a lifelong interest in representational painting, her final house being lavishly adorned with paintings, prints and photographs.

[Habanera, from Bizet's Carmen]

It must have been very difficult for Sally to make ends meet on so little money, for not only was she still young, but during the time that I knew her, budgeting never emerged as one of her strong points. John and Sally had many rows, mostly about the lack of money, and these rows continued throughout their marriage.  In London, Sally did part-time shop work, to which she returned a few years later. By the 1970s she had worked as a cook in a school, which still makes me shudder because her cooking skills were often rudimentary, and as an office cleaner, a school cleaner, a ‘daily’ home cleaner (like her mother), and a private gardener. The only job about which she ever talked with real affection was having worked as an usherette.

Sally and John's house in Dunstable

Sally and John were given a new start in 1964 when John finally landed a half-decent job in Luton, north of London. Accompanied by the surviving pet cat of two, the four of us relocated to [a rented semi-detached house in] nearby Dunstable, Bedfordshire. Sally bought a pedigree Irish setter she named Kerry, and a third child was decided upon. Kerry was delightful, but highly excitable, untrained and as poorly behaved as all the subsequent pet dogs, including border collies, a basset hound, a Pyrenean -cross and a black labrador. Sally soon struck up a friendship with a neighbour, Mary Chapman, and the two remained in periodic contact for the rest of Sally’s life. Sally also took to visiting a friend of her mother, called Tess Vevers. Tess was the wife of Geoffrey Vevers, a significant London socialist, long-time Superintendent at London Zoo, the person who set up Whipsnade Zoo, not far from Dunstable, mentor to Gerald Durrell, and erstwhile colleague of Sally’s father. Tess and Geoffrey lived in a house they built in the zoo, muntjac deer nibbling the flower beds and wallabies on the lawn. Sally had previously taken Carl and me to Regent’s Park Zoo in London, and she took us all to Chester Zoo on many occasions. I think that Sally may have been attracted to the romance of wild beasts collected from foreign parts. Sadly, John’s job did not last, and we were soon on the move again. Just before we left Dunstable, Lisa, Sally’s first daughter, was born.

After a brief but uncomfortable interlude back at John’s mother’s house, the five of us, plus cat and dog, moved to Chester, Cheshire. John had secured a job in a desolate industrial nightmare called Widnes , then Lancashire, now Cheshire. However, for the first time, certainly since her father’s death, perhaps in her entire life, Sally was living in a house in which she was not a tenant. Moreover, although small, it was detached and had gardens at both front and back. Sally considered that, at last, she was moving up in the world. Although not a natural gardener, she took an interest in growing flowers, and had a particular fondness for gladioli and Michaelmas daisies. With considerable labouring support from her family, the two gardens gradually took shape. Sally soon showed a preference for flower arranging over maintaining a large garden, but I was interested to see that, in her final house, she had turned a dingy back yard into a delightful green oasis.

Sally and John's house in Chester

Chester is a provincial town, where things tend to remain the same. Sally was not a provincial person, content with her lot, enjoying quiet relationships. She preferred intense relationships, and racier, cosmopolitan city life. No doubt feeling constrained, at the beginning of the 1970s Sally decided to learn to drive a car. Although petrol was then very much cheaper in real terms than it is now, the cost of buying and running a car was not really an affordable option, but as she had a little income from her part-time jobs Sally felt determined. Sally was not a natural driver, but she persevered. Once she had passed her driving test, Sally was determined to get out and explore North Wales, and she often took her four children and pet dog, but rarely John, to places such as Moel Famau. She also loved visiting formal gardens, such as those belonging to stately homes. Over the years, although forever constrained by poor personal finances, Sally’s taste for adventure included trips to the Netherlands, France, Portugal, and in 2011 on an Atlantic Coast cruise and in 2014 on a Nordic cruise.

Sally (right) with a friend on board a cruise ship

Sally on board a cruise ship

Ithaka by Constantine Kavafy

As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbours you’re seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind -
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you’re destined for.
But don’t hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you’re old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvellous journey.
Without her you wouldn't have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,

you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

On relocating to Chester, Sally not only had her hands full with two young sons and a baby daughter, but she was also completely removed her from any possibility of support by her mother, mother-in-law or friends, all of whom lived in or not far from London. Not having any siblings, nor experienced many childhood friends, Sally was a long way out of her depth as a mother. As a consequence, I had already manifested some quite troubled behaviour that ought to have rung alarm bells. This dislocation of Sally’s support had several serious consequences for her. Wisely, she started to grow a new support network, first through the Young Wives group of the local Anglican parish church (although her religious faith, such as it was, was very far from conventional), and subsequently through parents’ groups at the schools attended by me and my siblings. This is how she came to meet Margaret Townsend, who became a regular ‘listening ear’, a role taken over and continued by Margaret’s husband, Geoffrey, when Margaret died some years ago; and Joan Flood, with whom Sally also remained in contact. Second, Sally was prescribed tranquilisers that she continued to take for many years. Third, to add to her near-lifelong addiction to nicotine, Sally began drinking spirits more regularly and more heavily. Fourth, in 1968 she attempted to revive a past romantic relationship in north London, a choice that created additional tension with John. Fifth, Sally made several serious attempts to end her life. Clearly, the picture I am painting is of a troubled and unhappy woman. I am unclear why her unhappiness was not medically diagnosed as a condition that required a good deal more attention.

The arrival of my second sister, Rachel, in 1971, was unexpected, and although a joy to us all, placed the family finances under additional strain. John took a second, evening job, in a bar, distancing him further from the family. Sally also expressed considerable discomfort about the top-up fees being paid to educate three of her children in semi-independent schools. Things went from bad to worse when John was made redundant in 1975. Sally’s family life began to fragment.

Sally and John's house in St. Albans

As before, when things were bad, a relocation and new start were proposed, this time back in south east England. John managed to secure a job in Palmer’s Green, and together John and Sally bought a house in St. Albans, Hertfordshire in 1976. However, this was to be their last house together, and by 1979 they were divorced. Sally was already in another relationship when she bought a house in Garston, a suburb of Watford, Hertfordshire the following year. Rod Case was an ambulance driver, not a pen-pusher, and a hard drinker. His fluctuations in mood and temper matched those of Sally. For reasons that I do not understand she respected his aggression and occasional violence. They [relocated to Nottinghamshire in the 1980s, and] married in 1995, and Sally remained with Rod until his death in 2006.

Sally and Rod Case on their wedding day

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the tension within Sally was always present: feeling pulled between a need for drama in her relationships against the need for stability. When life became too ‘dramatic’ with Rod, Sally would seek solace with her friend Collin Dennison who was a much quieter person, and of whom, I am informed, Sally was extremely fond for 35 years. Collin sadly died at the start of June this year, an event that may have propelled Sally even further into drowning herself in bottles of vodka, an assault with which her internal organs were unable to cope. [Sally died on the morning of Tuesday 30 June 2015 with Tony and Andy at her hospital bedside.] 

from Macbeth by William Shakespeare

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

For me, the elephant in the room is that over a period of years, three of Sally’s children, including me, chose to sever all contact with her. Few people who experienced Sally will be in any doubt that she was a person with whom it was challenging to remain in relationship. Indeed, it was always Sally who challenged the relationship. For sure she could be charming, but there was frequently a sting in the tail. Decades of working as a therapeutic counsellor convinces me that, from the onset of her adult life, Sally ought to have been diagnosed with, and treated for, borderline personality disorder. Had she received the right treatment, I believe that Sally’s life could have been less tortured for her and less of a trial for others. The drama and tragedy of her life did often elicit some of the best in other people, acting out of compassion for her. I am especially grateful that several people, both around Nottingham, particularly Tony Nelson and Andy, but also Beryl, Steve and Carol, plus some further afield, have felt able to support Sally over these many years when I have been unable to do so. Despite living the best part of a thousand miles away, my brother Carl, and his family, maintained an unbroken link with Sally, whereas I could not.

Sally with a friend

Sally was a person I shall remember as having an appetite for drama, whether on the movie screen or in real life. For all that her words were often mired in clay, she was also a romantic, loving musicals and happy endings. Much like any girl of 14, standing on the threshold of life, it is as though Sally felt pulled in two directions. On the one hand she was attracted to drama and adventure, but found the dramatic and adventurous emotionally demanding, and it was hard for her to cope with the consequences; on the other hand she yearned for the safety and security of an idealised family life, but found it equally difficult to cope with the prosaic reality.

Sally with unknown infant

There are several short but meaningful passages in the funeral programme. I should like to close with one of them: Water-lilies by A.A. Milne. It was a personal favourite of Sally Cooper, the girl.

Water-lilies by A.A. Milne

Where the water-lilies go
To and fro,
Rocking in the ripples of the water,
Lazy on a leaf lies the Lake King's daughter,
And the faint winds shake her.
Who will come and take her?
I will! I will!
Keep still! Keep still!
Sleeping on a leaf lies the Lake King's daughter. . . .
Then the wind comes skipping
To the lilies on the water;
And the kind winds wake her.
Now who will take her?
With a laugh she is slipping
Through the lilies on the water.
Wait! Wait!
Too late, too late!
Only the water-lilies go
To and fro,
Dipping, dipping,
To the ripples of the water.

Let us now spend a few minutes in silence, remembering the life of Sally in the context of what we have heard, and reflecting on the meanings we give to her life and how she lived it. If you pray, this could also be a time when you might wish to do so.

[Five minutes of silence]

My brother Carl wishes to say a few words ...

...

The funeral closed with In Paradisum, from Fauré's Requiem.

Martin Herbert, who died on Wednesday 10 December 2014

Martin Herbert was my friend. He died in the early hours of yesterday morning. He died suddenly and unexpectedly. His death is a great shock to everyone who knew him.

Martin was my closest male friend from our University days: we studied at the University of Durham in the mid- to late-1970s. Like me, he was a thoughtful person, which is one of the reasons why we got on so well. We shared a taste in folk music. I talked at length with Martin when I first met the woman who would become my wife, and he attended our Quaker wedding many years later. It was Martin who aroused my interest in the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers).

However, unlike me, Martin was a talented amateur artist, and a gifted musician, both abilities that were to prove extremely significant in his life. I was familiar with his artworks while we were still students. Before he left Durham, Martin gave me one of his early, airbrushed acrylic works, the style of which was reminiscent of the work of Roger Dean, whose album covers were popular at the time. The painting has rarely been off a wall in whichever house I have lived in ever since.

Immediately after university, Martin was uncertain of his direction, and worked for a while as a 'theme park' station master at Beamish Museum in County Durham, in full uniform, replete with pocket watch. When I was turned down by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), Martin applied and his application was successful. In my beat up Austin 1300, I drove Martin and his luggage to Cambridge, where the BAS is based, only to discover that we had left a suitcase in Durham, so we had to drive all the way back again the same evening. He worked as a meteorologist in the Antarctic for a couple of years.

At some stage Martin took a well-paid job with a major software company called the Santa Cruz Operation (SCO), relocating to High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire. During this time, he developed his talents to play every musical instrument (other than a ukulele) one can find in a folk club, and then also started to run the folk club. Martin and at least one of his folk groups (Wynters Armoury?) played at folk festivals such as that at Cambridge. My wife, daughter and I met him in Whitby when he was playing at the folk festival there. He bought a bothy on the North York Moors, but sold it again when he realised how rarely he was able to travel back north. I am unsure how many years he worked for SCO, but at some stage he decided that he'd had enough of all that, had saved enough money, and took himself off round the world for a year, often travelling off the beaten track, collecting ethnic musical instruments, and being taught to play them. On his return, inspired by some indigenous American music and instruments he had encountered (and bought), he played, synthesised, recorded and produced an album of wonderful haunting music that I have listened to a million times: Spirit of the Wood. My cassette tape of the music is nearly worn out, but it can still be found in mp3 format on his website (www.martinherbert.com).

Whilst I am hazy about dates, some while later Martin packed his fiddle and went south to Andalucia (he was familiar with Laurie Lee's book As I walked Out One Midsummer Morning) to live in the house of a friend. There he started to develop much further his abilities in fine art. I think that he was in Spain for a couple of years. From a Pre-Raphaelite interest in naiads and dryads as an amateur artist at university, Martin developed a much more robust new-age kind of spiritual artistic interest and style, combining traditional artistic skills with digital. He launched a website called Spirit Visions, and was able successfully to sell some of his work. Returning to Britain, he moved into a ramshackle house in mid-Wales, and I guess that he was in proximity to like-minded people. He married a Finnish artist, Vivi-Mari Carpelan, who seemed to give him a renewed zest for life. Galleries accepted his work for sale, and he was a serious entrant for national artistic competitions. For a while his weblog incorporated weekly a new artwork. A year or two ago, Martin decided that he would be able to make more headway in the competitive artistic world if he were to have an MA in Fine Art. This autumn he enrolled at Aberystwyth University. His energy and enthusiasm for the degree appeared boundless, and it would seem that his presence was welcomed by staff and students alike.

I consider it possible that Martin may have mellowed in middle-age compared with our student days, when he was a refreshingly uncouth young man from Peterlee, County Durham, although I believe that he was born in Derbyshire. I will never forget an evening in some pub or other, telling how, on a previous occasion, having drunk quite a lot of alcohol, he had vomited and then observed: "I don't remember eating that!" Martin always lived life a little faster and more richly than me. Artist, musician, more-recently a loving husband, a good friend to many, many people, and my most long-standing friend. You will be missed. I shall miss you.

John Hughes 1936 - 1992

Today is the twentieth anniversary of my father's death. I miss him. I am sad that he is not here with us. I am sad that we have not had the benefit of his presence these past twenty years. I am sad for him that he has missed the past twenty years: time with his family would have meant a lot to him; time listening to music, watching plays and movies, reading and writing; time out walking on the moors; time counselling his clients; time managing his house and garden; time he never had. He should now be a mere 76 years old, maybe getting a little frail, but still with the energy and spark to engage, to contend, to contest, to affirm, to support, to love. Much of his life was sad in one way or another: raised fatherless in wartime London; injured in Cyprus during compulsory military service; married far too young having got his teenage girlfriend pregnant; periods of unemployment; more mouths to feed and a wife who knew little financial discipline; long working hours in a hell-hole industrial town; redundancy; divorce; isolation. His health declined, made worse by tobacco and alcohol: he suffered a bout of hepatitis. He had the first of several heart attacks in the mid-1980s, the final heart attack being fatal. I am hugely thankful that he was able to find love with Anne, to remarry and move to Cornwall. Would that much more of his life had been of that ilk.

I write this, not to claim special knowledge, special understanding or a special relationship with him. Each of my siblings (full, half and step) have their own experiences of him. I think that he impacted positivley on the lives of many people with whom he came into contact, especially in Cornwall and Devon. Each will have their own memories of him. I write this as a kind of wayside shrine, twenty years along the road. Not being one for cut flowers, I would perhaps plant a flowering rose in his memory, and maybe a peppermint bush as well.

...

For a while you were, about which I feel grateful. You died, and are now no more: I feel an aching loss. Who you were touched the lives of many, and shaped the lives of some, of whom I am one. Who you were will not be forgotten.

The execution of Ali Hassan al-Majeed

From the news BBC radio reports that I have heard, and the BBC website reports I have read, Ali Hassan al-Majeed, popularly known in the West as 'Chemical Ali', was a man with brutal values who acted on those values, resulting in the death of many thousands of people. In particular, he directed the persecution of Kurdish population in northern Iraq, the most celebrated attack being at Halabja in which 5,000 people died from the mustard gas attack he ordered. He also organised the crushing of Shi'ite communities after Iraq's war with Iran, and again after the First Gulf War (George Bush senior). For these war crimes he was sentenced to death on four counts. In addition, he co-ordinated the killing of less-than-loyal members of Saddam Husein's immediate family, of which he was also a member. It is difficult to imagine a man who, in the eyes of the world, more deserved to be executed for his crimes. Ali Hassan al-Majeed was executed by Iraqi authorities on Monday 25 January 2010.

I remain resolute in my belief that killing is wrong. The execution of this man not only enacts the belief that some people do not deserve to live, but also that I have - someone has - the moral right to determine the ending of a person's life. I do not have that right, and no-one should have that right other than the person themselves. I believe that, in its pre-meditation, execution is a morally worse act than accidental killing, say, in the commission of a robbery.

Having visited Auschwitz-Birkenau

One of my sisters recently visited Auschwitz-Birkenau. I have never had the courage to visit that grim place, and I respect her for doing so. In response to her visit she found herself asking versions of the primary questions listed below that she was kind enough to e-mail me. I have added some searching, self-reflective supplementary questions because that is my nature. It is not my intention to remove anything from her experience by developing her material in this way. Rather, my purpose is to engage with her material in ways that are relevant to my process. As recorded elsewhere, I am currently active in considering a new non-religious ethical framework for society. It is in this context that my supplementary questions can best be read.

Q1. What is the character of someone who believes that other people are a sub-species and unworthy of life? Are there occasions when I treat someone, or some group of people, with less than the full respect that belongs to humanity?

Q2. What possible ethical framework could permit medical doctors to perform "experiments" on living people, and subsequently kill those people with phenol injections? In what ways do I behave unethically towards people, even if those people live in a different continent? I buy electronic goods that I suspect were manufactured in Chinese sweat-shops; I buy food staples that may have been grown and harvested by poor and oppressed people working the farms and estates of trans-national corporations.

Q3. What did the recipients of second-hand clothes / false limbs/ glasses / suitcases / etc., believe about their provenance? Do I always enquire about the provenance of the clothes I wear and the food I eat?

Q4. How could anyone feel okay about making cloth from the hair, and lampshades from the skin, of people for whom they have contempt, and what kind of person would want to possess objects made from those materials? What will people of the future think about the choices I have been making during my life?

Q5. Why did the Nazi machine go to the lengths of transporting Jewish people from places as far away as Greece and Portugal (taking up to 10 days in freight trains) to Birkenau, only then to murder them?

Q6. How did the tens, or even hundreds, of thousands of people who were involved at some level in the premeditated murder of Jewish, Roma, gay and disabled people across Europe, subsequently reconcile themselves with the wickedness in which they had participated, or at least with which they had colluded? How do I reconcile myself with knowledge of the hurt and pain I have caused people during my life?

Q7. Why didn't the Hungarian 'underground resistance' disseminate the news from escapees about what was happening in Birkenau, and thus prevent half a million Jewish people from being transported there in 1944? How guilty am I for allowing people to believe what I have known not to be true.

Q8. To what extent did the UK and US governments keep quiet about Auschwitz-Birkenau? Why do I stand by without complaint and permit the UK government to deport from the UK refugees from strife-torn parts of the world?

Q9. Are the Italian authorities currently dehumanising the Roma people, and thereby moving in the same direction as the Nazis? Is my conscience as squeaky clean as I should like people to believe?

Q10. By what signs could I recognise that the people around me have gone a step too far? Would I be prepared to recognise that a line had been crossed? What would I do about it were I to see it happening?

***

The following poem is widely attributed to Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) about the inactivity of German intellectuals following the Nazi rise to power and the purging of their chosen targets, group after group.

Original

Translation

Als die Nazis die Kommunisten holten, habe ich geschwiegen; ich war ja kein Kommunist. Als sie die Sozialdemokraten einsperrten, habe ich geschwiegen; ich war ja kein Sozialdemokrat. Als sie die Gewerkschafter holten, habe ich nicht protestiert; ich war ja kein Gewerkschafter. Als sie die Juden holten, habe ich geschwiegen; ich war ja kein Jude. Als sie mich holten, gab es keinen mehr, der protestieren konnte.

When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent; I was not a communist. When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat. When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out; I was not a trade unionist. When they came for the Jews, I remained silent; I wasn't a Jew. When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.

***

In 2003, American punk rock band NoFX paraphased the poem in the song "Re-gaining Unconsciousness" on the album War on Errorism

First they put away the dealers,

keep our kids safe and off the street.

Then they put away the prostitutes,

keep married men cloistered at home.

Then they shooed away the bums,

then they beat and bashed the queers,

turned away asylum-seekers,

fed us suspicions and fears.

We didn't raise our voice,

we didn't make a fuss.

It's funny there was no one left to notice

when they came for us.

***

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing." (frequently misattributed to Edmund Burke.)

***

14:50 Wednesday 16 July 2008, Cafe, Murray Library, Sunderland

My sister visited Auschwitz-Birkenau last weekend. I am filled with tears simply imagining the experience. I wish never to visit the place which is as close to hell as I ever need to hear about. Besides, my credentials go a long way to excusing me the ordeal. As a lifelong pacifist, a Quaker for 25 years and a vegan for nearly 15 years, it would be difficult to mistake where I stand on issues relating to the wickednesses perpetrated in that evil place. On most of the occasions when I have visited Amsterdam I have been in the Anne Frank House, which I have also browsed online. I have visited the holocaust memorials in both Paris (several times) and in Berlin (where I should also like to visit the new memorial to the gay people who were murdered by the Nazi regime). Also in Berlin I have twice visited the harrowing Topography of Terror exhibition next to the Martin Gropius House. In both Sunderland (Crowtree Centre) and Newcastle (a gallery off Pilgrim Street) I have attended holocaust exhibitions. I have not only attended the anti-apartheid demonstration outside the South African Embassy in London when white-skinned people ruled South Africa, but I have also picketed Barclays Bank in Durham for its collusion with the apartheid regime. Perhaps more controversially, I make a point of reading the website of the far right British National Party in order to understand their poison. I have attended anti-racist training workshops, although I have never led any. However, I have led gay-awareness and mental health awareness workshops. My daughter has multiple disabilities, and as one response, I use British Sign Language. During the first five years of my life I was brought up in close proximity to a Jewish family (Marion and David Bernard and their three children) in north-west London. As a counsellor I have examined in detailed, and hold up for ongoing examination, my opinions, attitudes and thoughts. As a Quaker, my beliefs are subject to perpetual examination. Superficially, then, my credentials appear kosher. However, I have written almost nothing about any of this in a way that positions me in relation to other people - I rarely stand up to be counted. I am, in fact, indistinguishable from the narrator or Niemöller's poem. Neither do I do much that makes a practical, positive difference. It is not sufficient that I have a preference for the light of truth and love, and that I reject the darkness of ignorance, fear and hatred. I have lost sight of the fact that it is my duty to be creating light, and my responsibility to be shining as a beacon against the darkness of falsehood and hypocrisy. Compared to the bleak days of the 1930s and 1940s, I live in blessed times. Compared to the darkness that enshrouds the populations of Zimbabwe, Burma and North Korea, the UK is "summertime, and the living is easy" ... but I have, for too long, chosen to sit on my hands. My comfortably-won credentials do not, in fact, excuse me from visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau. The first question for me to ask now is whether I am able to stir myself into action before making that grim pilgrimage.

Executing people

The BBC News website announced today that four prisoners on 'death row' in Japan have just been executed. In Libya, several health workers accused and convicted of spreading HIV / AIDS, from which children have died, are now sentenced to death. I have little hesitation in condemning without reservation these barbarities. Killing is wrong. It is as though a blood sacrifice is required to restore the balance of justice. In the Libyan case, the people found guilty are patently innocent of the crimes, but the local people (according to the BBC News website) want someone to 'pay the price' for their children being infected. Whether or not the Japanese prisoners were in fact guilty of the crimes for which they were convicted and sentenced to death I have no idea, and would make no difference. The only spirit served by executing them is brutality, thus increasing the sum of violence in the world. People throughout the world are in desperate need of less, not more, barbarity. As wars, and police death squads, and vigilante groups, and terrorist cells should become only of the past, so should executing people. Abolish the death penalty!

Killing Saddam Hussein

I permit no-one to take life in my name, for killing is wrong. Whether perpetrated by tyrants or democratically-elected governments, killing is wrong. Regardless of purpose, motivation or mitigation, killing is wrong. Whether executed as a crime in passion, in time of war, or judicially in cold blood, killing is always wrong.

Death of a former counselling client

(I am mindful of confidentiality.) A former counselling client died a few days ago. I feel sad. Our formal relationship ended a year ago, so I have had plenty of time to break the bonds of attachment that had held the relationship together. I do not feel distraught or disturbed, but some quiet pity for the waste of the years that will not be lived, and sadness that the client's life was never easy.

I feel bad that I shall not go to the funeral. Were I to attend, my presence, if understood, would compromise relatives because of what I know about them. My presence would offer them no comfort, and I fear that my involvement would be seen as having contributed to the problems the client experienced. I said my goodbyes a year ago and have no need to perform the public ritual at the local crematorium. Instead, I shall hold the client's life in my thoughts periodically.

Two years later: I find myself often thinking of the client. I think about our work together; the compromises we each made; my care and compassion for you; and your likely respect for me. I often wonder what it was like to live your life, and to endure your pain, loneliness and suffering. In truth, I frequently wonder what it is like to live the life of many of the people I see for counselling. As a counsellor, I probably understand more about some aspects of a person's life than anyone else they know, and yet I am humbled by how little I know or understand about them. From Ginza to Grainger Town, we are each a mystery to each other, and often even to ourselves.

I hope that you felt supported and encouraged by me. I hope that, although I could not possibly understand you better than yourself, I helped you to understand yourself better.

Halloween carnival

Monday will be Halloween. The schedules of television channels are already flavoured with kitsch-horror. Retailing opportunities in north east England have already been themed. Supermarket shelves are filled with gruesome rubber masks, devilish tridents, pumpkins and all the rest of the mock-horror paraphernalia. Posters show graveyards, tombstones and ghouls. Gatherings of people are suffused with a weakly carnival-like atmosphere. Children will be attending Halloween parties, some dressed as ghosts, others as witches. Adults will be attending adult Halloween parties, with at least an edge of heightened sexual awareness. There are shadows beyond the public light. Alongside all the laughter there is also a lurking and pervading sense of menace: young people gleefully terrorising (trick or treat) and frightening (with masks and gruesome faces).

There is, for me, something disturbing and unhealthy about revelry swirling around concepts of death and evil. In most instances, death involves loved ones, loss, pain and difficult transitions. The prospect of my own death is a key factor in how I chose to live my life. I miss my father, who died in 1992. I still recall vividly my pain and sadness at the death of the family pet dog in the 1960s, and the violent sobs of my daughter when her pet hamster died. Evil is what murdered Anne Frank and millions of Jewish people. Evil stalked the streets of Kosovo and the villages of Rwanda and Burundi, and still visits refugee camps in Darfur. I have no enthusiasm to celebrate death and evil.

Maybe the Halloween carnival is a response to the fear that people feel about cancer, bird 'flu, war, terrorist bombs and airliner crashes. Making jokes about death, and laughing at evil, may be coping strategies for some people. There are also traditions, elsewhere in the world, such occasions as the Mexican 'Day of the Dead', that acknowledges the importance, sadness and irrevocability of death. Easter (technically Good Friday) appears to be a sober acknowledgment of the fundamental existential importance of death, even though it is also overlaid with Christian dogma. These examples seem valuable.

To be continued ...

About my father and his death

My father, John, was born on 2 January 1936. Fascism was in its ascendancy in continental Europe. His father, Jim, was in the British army, and lived in Marylebone, central London, UK. Rene had lived with her family in Harrow, north west London. Jim and Rene moved into a flat in Marylebone, and before Jim left the UK in 1939 to fight for his country, they had a second son, my uncle. However, Jim was already married with two daughters. When he returned to the UK, after the war, Jim returned to his wife and daughters.

I wonder what it was like on that doubtless cold, probably miserable, January day, seventy years ago. How frightening it must have been for Rene to give birth to her first child having little certainty about how the baby was to be supported.

***

Aged 48 years, my father had his first heart attack in January 1984. It very nearly killed him. A year or two before he had bought a small, unexceptional terraced house, in which he was now living, in Enfield, north London, UK. He had recently started in a new, though somewhat menial, office job in nearby Palmer's Green. He remarried in spring 1983, at a civil ceremony in Liskeard, Cornwall, UK, at which I was a witness. Anne Stevenson wrote them a wedding poem that was subsequently published in The Times. Their first, her second, his third, daughter was born in December 1983. That first heart attack was also the start of his life.

My father's final, fatal heart attack struck some eight years later, when he was aged 56. He was now living in an attractive, stone-built cottage that he and his wife had bought and renovated on the edge of Bodmin Moor in Cornwall. He was working as a counsellor and counselling trainer; he was reading and writing a lot; he was able to spend time walking on Bodmin Moor, time learning about the local history and natural history of eastern Cornwall, time on his small-holding, time raising his daughter. During those eight years, he lived more, and more richly, in ways that were meaningful to him, than he had been able to live in the preceding 48 years. He had become interested and interesting, someone who had something to say, someone I could relate to. On the one hand it seems to me desperately sad that six sevenths of his life were dirt-poor, unfulfilling or deeply unhappy, and often all three. On the other hand I am thankful that he was able eventually to find happiness, and also that it was the final stage of his life that was the most enjoyable, fulfilling and personally rewarding for him.

He died on a Monday morning. His death was sudden and unexpected. Whilst his health since the first heart attack had required management, the triple-bypass operation had been successful. He had an ischaemic heart attack in 1991, and was subsequently subjected to hospital tests ("testing to destruction" he called it - I wonder if he was, in fact, correct). However, to all appearances, he could have lived a further ten years.

I was teaching at the time, and received a telephone call informing me of his death. For some reason I was not surprised. My co-tutor assumed responsibility for the class as I prepared to leave. I drove home, packed a few things, and set off for Cornwall: 400 miles, door-to-door. Several abiding images: sitting alone in a motorway service station drinking a mug of coffee, thinking about the bleak telephone call that told me of his first heart attack eight years before; an empty neon-lit motorway at midnight swooping down into Bristol; the narrow country lanes of eastern Cornwall, always so full of primroses and promise, now devoid of meaning, their sole and barren purpose to lead me to my father's dead body. It was something after two in the morning when I arrived.

I spent time with him, alone, reflecting on my experience of his life, my experience of my life with him, this experience of sitting in a room with the dead body of my father, this experience of sitting in a room with a dead body. His body had been laid on the bed, a loving, if practical, gesture, about which there was something calming, and amplified by the apparent peacefulness of his repose. I should have found it disturbing had his body shown indications of pain. I never doubted that he was dead, even though I expected to. His body looked lifeless, in the same way that the engine of a car recovered from having been swept out to sea is far beyond any hope of repair. His body appeared separated from life, like a spacewalking astronaut whose umbilical was accidentally, catastrophically, severed. I could see that my father was now beyond my reach, further receding as each moment passed. Although I debated the issue this way and that, I had no desire to touch his body for I was clear that I wished that my last and lasting memory of his physical presence should not be one that was cold and alien, but instead was visually warm and homely. Not everyone is offered my advantage of choice, and I remain sure, and thankful, that I made the right decision for me, about him, at that time.

We held a public funeral for him in Bodmin one morning the following week, playing tapes of music meaningful to him, such as from Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde. A huge number of people were in attendance, almost all from his life since his move to Cornwall after his first heart attack. In the afternoon we held a more intimate gathering in the tea rooms at Lanhydroc. His body had been cremated, and we scattered his ashes in places that had become important to him: up on the moors, and in the local woods and rivers. Each event involved acknowledging and accepting the reality of his death and embracing the pain of loss. I realise now that inevitable tectonic movement was taking place in the dynamics of family relationships, for since his life had restarted my father had become the hub connecting people. Without him the old model would no longer function. I was also at a watershed in my comprehension of him as a person: no longer able to check things out with him, no longer able to interact with him, in the main all that I shall ever understand about him is already within me. I have spent the past twelve years slowly getting to know what kind of a person he was and what kind of a life he led, both before and after that first heart attack.

Now that I am entering that same age-window, I cannot help but be aware that the ages at which he had his various heart attacks seem so young, premature, and frighteningly close-to-hand.

The Death Clock is ticking

Like others before me, I became fascinated with the Death Clock. So fascinated, in fact, that I cashed in some of my increasingly precious seconds in order to feed the clock various data and thus discover what differences would result.

As a non-smoking male, who is only a bit overweight, my life expectancy is about 73 years. Barring accident and major illness, I have 25 years of life left in me. Were I a woman, I would live longer. Were I to smoke or gain weight, I would die sooner.

I was disappointed that, according to the Death Clock, there is nothing I can do to lengthen my allotted three score years and thirteen, other than (I suppose) submit myself to a sex change operation. I should have thought that my strictly vegan diet, whilst not limited to rice and lentils, ought to count for something in time credits. That I have for the time being given up drinking alcohol (supposedly for a Lent detox: I have been dry now since the end of January 2005) would suggest I deserved the addition of an extra year or two to my quota, but I read somewhere (or more likely heard it on the radio) that people who drink no alcohol live shorter lives than people who drink in spinster-restrained moderation. According to the Death Clock, losing weight would make a difference only were I to weigh more than I currently weigh.

I guess that the Death Clock algorithm (calculation) is based on insurance tables. I wonder how country-specific it is. Does it include statistics from parts of the world that are economically under-developed, where life expectancy is shorter than in the west? Assuming that the Death Clock makes its calculations from data drawn from within and beyond the US, I guess that it averages out regional variations that led to shorter life-spans, say, in Karelia (Finland) and Glasgow (Scotland). The Death Clock takes no specific account of inherited illnesses and genetic legacies; diet and exercise (other than their impact on body weight - in Karelia, whilst the lumberjacks were very fit, their high-dairy diet was packed so full of saturated fats that they died young of heart attacks caused by clogged arteries); or of compromised heath and safety at work. Obviously I am taking the Death Clock more seriously than the purpose for which it was intended.

How, then, should I respond to the Death Clock? Several thoughts occur. First, regardless of its accuracy regarding my own lifespan, the Death Clock is ticking, and at some point in the future my pockets will be empty of coins with which to feed the meter. Game over. I should like to explore the meaning of 'game over' on another occasion. The consequence, however, is that, as the seconds of my life tick away, I have perpetual opportunity to determine how to live my life. This is not to suggest that I am 'free to do anything I like'. It is, however, to suggest that I can re-evaluate my priorities and do more of my choosing. I should like to explore this on another occasion.

Second, despite its apparent bluntness as a predictive tool, the Death Clock serves as a reminder that my health and well-being are my responsibility that I can choose to accept or deny as I wish. There is much that I know about my health, and I often choose to act on this knowledge (for instance, I eat lots of fruit and vegetables; I have intentionally reduced my body weight; I have, for the time being, cut out drinking alcohol). However, I also make choices that are based on ignorance (for instance, I have only just found out that Teflon-type coatings are carcinogenic) or self-deception (for instance, I know that I ought to exercise much more than I do; I know that fried food is significantly less healthy than raw or boiled food, and yet I tell myself that it is not too bad; I still eat far too much salt). I should like to explore this on another occasion.

Third, whilst it may appear self-evident in 21st century western society that I should wish to maximise the length of my life, my preference is for my quality of life to remain high. I am not keen on the prospect of years of terminal decline (physical, cognitive, emotional and spiritual) into a low-quality, meaningless existence serving neither myself nor anybody else. I should like to explore several issue around this on another occasion.

Game over
I recently watched a movie (Random Hearts, starring Harrison Ford and Kristin Scott-Thomas) in which an airliner flying from Washington to Miami crashes into the sea. The people on board are killed, their existence suddenly, unexpectedly, prematurely extinguished. Their game was over: no more moves to make, no more sights to drink in, no more food to savour, no more music to enjoy, no more hopes and expectations, no more love. (To be continued ...)