Dear Ceylan...a letter

Dear Ceylan
It's hard to believe that it's been five years since you left us.
Five years since I last saw your smile. 
Five years since you were part of this world.
Five years since your heart stopped beating so suddenly.
Still, there are moments when, in a busy street, I look up and am sure that I  have glimpsed you hurrying around a corner just ahead of me or slipping into a shop before I can catch up with you.
I know now, that it's just a trick of memory, a vision made almost real by the desire for it to be true.
But for just an instant, I allow myself to believe it's you.
"It's been five years," people say, " Time heals all wounds. At least the grieving is over now."
But that's not true.
Grief is not that convenient.
It's not time-limited,
it has no beginning or end.
It becomes a constant companion..
And true, it's no longer all-consuming the way it was those first few days, weeks, months.
It no longer engulfs me like a black fog, turning everything it touches into shadows of inconsequence.
Instead, now, grief has become the emotion that fills the empty space where you should be.
Five years on Ceylan, we have not stopped grieving the loss of you, but we have learnt to live with grief.

We went to Germany to see Torsten and the kids a few months ago.
They're doing ok.
Selma is so beautiful.  
Tall for her 9 years, he hair a mass of tight, unruly curls. 
She still hates having it brushed but Torsten doesn't give up.  
He knows you would never have let her go to school with messy hair.
Her favourite colour isn't purple anymore, she thinks it's blue, and she loves playing " it," and climbing as high as she can .
We climbed to the top of the goal post in their school playground, Selma and Mia and me.
She's an amazing climber. 
She was already scrambled to the top before Mia and I had taken our first step.
We sat watching the sun set over the fields and woods that surround their village.
I watched Selma absorbing the peace.
She tries so hard to be brave, to fold away her cloak of sadness and hide it in her pocket.
But there are still times when the lack of you is too unbearable, when all she can do is curl up and cry.
" When that happens she tells me that she is just sad because the world was more beautiful when her mum was in it," Torsten sats, " And all I can say, is that I know it was. But I think things are slowly getting better.  The other day we were buying her some shoes.  She has quite big feet and the woman in the shop smiled and said- it won't be long until you can wear your mum's shoes- and for the first time, Selma didn't say anything.  Didn't say my mum is dead or start crying. She just nodded. When I asked her why afterwards, she  shrugged and said it's just not  worth explaining it to everyone dad. That's an improvement, isn't it? A sign that she is beginning to cope better?"
And it probably is Ceylan, she's probably learning to cope without you.
But it made me feel guilty.
Made me wonder how many times  we, all of us, unknowingly, say careless things.
How many times in the course of a normal day, children who have lost a parent, are reminded of their pain.
I see it in Selma's clear, blue eyes as she watches the sun set,  searching the horizon for something she will never find.
I see it in the calm independence of Luis who has grown up not knowing that some of the things he does himself are things his mum would have done for him.
He was so young when you died Ceylan, still so unformed.
He looks like you.
His 7 year old eyes are so dark and deep you feel as though you are falling into them.
His gentle, thoughtful smile is heart-breakingly beautiful.
And he's a perfectionist, just like you.
Dividing sweets precisely between two boxes and very exactly cutting the crust from his bread.
His hair falls dark over his face, just like yours.
You would be so proud of him.
He's self-contained and definite.
There's a "just-so-ness," to his world, that holds his life together.
He seems to possess an inner strength way beyond his years.
He loves cooking.
We made chocolate chip cookies with him and Selma.
Luis knew where everything was and measured out exactly the right quantities.
He's as delicately determined as you were.
And he's amazing at ice-skating.
Were you?
I think you must have been
Because I stood at the edge of the ice rink and every time he flashed past, I could imagine it was you.
Sometimes the three of them, Torsten and Selma and Luis, glided across the rink together, holding hands, laughing, watching Mia and Joss and Ninesh as they wobbled uncertainly near the edge ( I was too cowardly to try! ).
Selma and Luis tried to help them.
Selma held Mia's hand.
Luis hovered near Joss.
But in the end the joy of gliding smoothly across the clear, white ice was too tempting.
They were just two kids having fun on the ice with their dad.

The house is lovely Ceylan.
Torsten has done such a good job making it into a home.
It's much bigger than your house in England.
I think you'd like it.  
Big and airy and full of light with just the right amount of furniture.
There is a tree in the garden that is your tree.
The kids bring things to show to you there: feathers and special stones they have found.
You can see the garden from every room but it looks best from the living room.
In the living room, 
Joss was lying there on the sofa when I walked in...
" Mum," he whispered, " Selma just said Mama."
I looked at Selma.
She was sitting on the floor, behind a chair, trying to fold a picture she has made in a special way.
It wasn't folding right.
Silently I sat down next to her.
She kept trying to fold and re-fold the paper but it wouldn't work.
Suddenly she looked up at me, tears streaming down her face.
" You can't help me," she said.
And the words stabbed me because I know she's right.
5 years on and her grief is still so huge and so raw, there is no pocket big enough to hide it in, no one who can help her enough.
Torsten tries so hard Ceylan.
He tries so hard to do the impossible, to be a mum and a dad to them.
And he does everything he can to make your dreams for them come true.
He's so proud of them.
So worried about them.
And he reads to them all the time- remember how you told me he wasn't so good at that?
He wears your wedding ring on his little finger so that it touches his.
And he carries your memory with him everywhere he goes.
It's not always easy for him.
There are times when the children cling to him, clambering over him when he is sitting down, hanging round his neck, as though they need every ounce of his soul to make them feel complete.
And he is endlessly calm and kind and patient.
His love for them shines so bright and is so strong, it's almost tangible.
They are surrounded by love, Selma and Luis.
His parents and your parents still come and look after them every few weeks.
They still spend every Summer in Turkey with your mum and dad..
The children would like it if Torsten stayed there longer but he says he can't, not yet.
He's still not ready for that.
I think that, In Turkey, everything he sees or touches or hears is a memory of you so that there, your absence doesn't lessen, it grows.

And so, you see, Ceylan, life has somehow muddled on without you.
Mia and Joss are growing up, standing on the gritty beach of teenagehood, occassionaly dipping their toes into the adult life beyond.. 
Ninesh and I are getting older, with all the grey hairs and wrinkles that come with age.
At least you were spared that.
After you died Ninesh bought a convertible and took up paragliding.
He never said it, but I think it was because of you.
I think he realised that life is too short and unpredictable and fragile to put off doing the things you have always wanted to do. 
And me.
I gave up work to spend time with the people I really care about.
I keep thinking of you, how you had given up work for that first year in England.
How you spent it with Selma and Luis.
How that year is their most precious memory.
If the loss of you has taught me anything, it is to have no regrets and to have the courage to do only what I believe is right.
And so that is how I live my life.
It makes me happy.
From even the saddest places, hope can grow.
I talk to you often.
Do you hear me?
If you do, I hope it's not too annoying.
You always were a good listener.

So you see Ceylan, you are only out of reach, never out of mind.
Today the skies are blue and cloudless, not raging with rain and thunder like the days after you died.
I hope it's because you have found peace.

As I write this, our garden is bathed in sunshine.
I imagine looking up and seeing the outline of you, your gentle, half-shy smile mingling with the sunlight, your words a whisper on the breeze.
And I think, perhaps,I know what you are telling us.
That five years on, it's time to stop crying.
We will try Ceylan.
Life has this way of forcing us to live it and even if our tears have dried, we, all of us who knew you, live it a little more sadly for the lack of you.
I'll never stop missing you.
Love always
Becky x

Your family

Patchwork Lives

Last  Sunday was my uncle's 90th birthday celebration.  
It has been a long time in the planning, this gathering of the generations.
Guests travelled from the far North of England, from Wales, from Germany. fellow survivors of the Holocaust travelling miles, to celebrate with him..
His daughter, my cousin,  had very impressively managed to arrange most of the party from her home in Germany.
" How's the planning going?" I asked, the last time I spoke to her before the party.
" Well," she said, " it's all sorted. We've booked the local synagogue hall, we've sorted the caterers and we've asked 70 people, family and friends, who have all accepted the invitation. Only one person has said they're definitely not coming."
" That's a shame," I said, " who is it."
"My dad," said my cousin.
I laughed, she didn't.
" Do you think we can celebrate his 90th birthday without him?" she asked. 
I hesitated.
" Well you can't cancel it now.  Perhaps he'll feel better about it on the day."
" Maybe," she said,  sounding  unconvinced.  And I understood why.
My uncle has always been stubborn, even when he was well and young.  Now that he is unwell and old, he clings to his stubborness like a lifebuoy. 
 It is the one thing that is not disappearing with his memory.
"Perhaps we could persuade him to sit in his wheelchair and then run.." I suggested.
My cousin gave a half-hearted laugh.
"He doesn't really use a wheelchair. I guess we'll just see what happens on the day."
But the day arrived and even as people began to trickle into their house, my uncle remained determined not to enjoy his day.
Family and long-time friends gathered in the front room while my uncle sat, resolutely grumpy and alone in the kitchen.
" Walk with me to the hall," said my cousin, half an hour before the party was due to start. She turned to her mandolin-playing minstrel brother, " perhaps you can just tell dad it's time to go," she said, " maybe he'll forget where it is he's meant to be going to and just come with you.."
Her brother nodded, " I'll do my best," he said quietly.
We set off for the synagogue, the hall decorated with balloons, round tables laid out with name plates and cutlery.
" It's looks amazing," I said, "I don't know how you managed to arrange all this from Berlin."
My cousin shrugged. " Let's hope everyone comes," she said, ' then at least, if dad really doesn't come we'll be able to show him the photos. It's amazing how many people care about him."
And everybody did come.
The hall was full, everyone seated and the first course just about to be served, when my uncle arrived.  
Leaning on his stick, he walked slowly to his seat and sat down next to my aunt.
My cousin grinned,  heaved a huge sigh of relief and her brother took out his mandolin and played the first notes of happy birthday.
A mixture of tuneful and disharmonious voices filled the hall.
Everyone  joined in, and even though my uncle's eyes were closed, he was smiling.
The courses were peppered with speeches ( and even a poem ) by family and friends and the room was filled with the gentle hum of conversation and the odd screech of laughter from the table of teenagers.
All the grandchildren and great nieces and nephews from the ages of 7 to 17, were sitting together.
And, as is always the way with groups of teenagers, they were wrapped in a cloak of unrealised potential, an edgy energy, that seemed to say, ' we are just slightly more important than the rest of you.. 
While the speeches remembered my uncle's past, the teenage table represented his future, my uncle's fingerprint resting on the heads of his two grandchildren.
They are half Indian, half Jewish and, in a strange twist of fate,  living in Berlin the city where their granddad's life began and from which he had to flee. It's like his world has turned full circle, but somehow in the turning it has moved to a different universe
I wondered, if in all his wildest, long-ago Berlin dreams, my uncle, a young Jewish boy, could ever have imagined he would be part of such a patchwork family.
In those days, anyone who married outside their faith would be shunned by the rest of their family.
Yet in his 90th year he sits at the head of a family that is like a small version of the United Nations. A mixture of-Indian, English, Thai, Sri Lankan and Welsh blood coursing through the veins of his grand children and great nieces and nephews. None of this third generation are practising Jews, most of the second generation Jewish in name only, The trauma of his niece coming out as gay many, many years ago, a distant memory ( even the never-ending Passover night when she added "or she," every time God was called "he*) and her partner long-since accepted as a member of the family.

Some of the patchwork family

But despite this diluting of his religion through the generations, nothing has meant more to  my uncle or had more impact on his life, than his Jewish faith. 
 Family and friends stood up  and, with warmth and obvious respect, told the story of his life, 
As a German refugee  at the beginning of the Second World War, his life in England  began  in a children's home  for children who arrived on the Kindertransport. He was lucky., his mum and dad were with him, they were running the home. But he had to share them with all the other lonely, frightened, suddenly-parentless children.
 It was a strange, sad beginning to a new life in a world that had been turned upside down by the crazy,, incomprehensible rise of a devastating anti-semitic hatred.
The speeches were warm and witty. 
There was no anger at the tearing apart of the lives of so many in that room, just a sense of belonging to something  that will never be completely destroyed.
" All these people are nice people" my dad said when the speeches had finished, "they're all kind and gentle. Why would anyone want to murder us?"
I looked at the crowd gathering around my almost-asleep uncle.
It was a hall full of survivors.
 Even the patchwork teenagers were only here because the people before them had survived.
It always seems strange to me that people who have given up everything, had to make a new start from nothing, should end up living every day lives in unexciting suburbs like my uncle, moving from the North of England to Slough and then to Ealing.
But perhaps that's what survival means, recreating the normal, trying to give your family the very thing you lacked, a life of certainty and uneventfulness.
Of course it never quite works that way.
His children are wanderers, restless somehow, not quite wanting to belong.
But he and my aunt made them a home full of love and laughter and life.
And in his 90th year, my uncle still hasn't lost is sense of humour.
Although he seemed to be asleep for most of the speeches, when they were finished he pointed at the microphone.
My cousin was really pleased.
" After all that fuss about not coming, he's going to make a speech," she smiled.
Everyone turned towards him, waiting.
With slow determination he switched the microphone on.
" What I want to know," he said after a pause, " is why no one has mentioned Slough."

Slowly people began to leave, each of them representing a different part of my uncle's life.  Old and young, religious and irreligious, his past and his future.
And I realised suddenly that it is not just our families but our whole lives that are a human sized patchwork of being. A collection of memories and experiences, of now and then, of who we are and what we were, held together by a golden thread of beliefs and values and hope.
As the hall emptied, my uncle made his slow way to the synagogue. 
It's a tiny room now, partitioned off at the end of the hall, a shadow of what it used to be,it's members dwindling and ageing. 
 But it's where my uncle feels most at home, where the sometimes fading patches of his life come together, vibrant and alive for the shortest of moments, a quilt of comfort in an often uncomforting world.
And perhaps, for just a little while, he is transported to Slough.

Happy Birthday Uncle Kurt

Pub (un)Culture

It's a regular argument in our house, a debate Ninesh, my husband, and I have every time we have we are free to go out together for the evening.
"Why go to the pub?" I ask, " What's so special about a pub?"
Ninesh usually looks at me and shakes his head sadly as though to say: " You poor thing, how can you not understand?"
But I really don't.
I don't understand what's so great about going and standing in a packed pub, crushed shoulder to shoulder with  people who you don't know.
I don't understand why sitting and yelling at each other over the noise of the crowd and the music is a fun way to communicate.
I don't understand the point of paying huge amounts of money for a pint of mediocre beer or a glass of horrible wine.

" It's the atmosphere," says Ninesh, " the buzz...."
" Really," I say, "The atmosphere of drunken lairishness and the buzz of flies around the disgusting toilets?"
Ninesh sighs
" What did you have in mind then?" he asks.
" How about we stay in?" I say.
" What!," he says, "Why would we stay in when it's our chance to go out?" 
" The calm atmosphere and the buzzlessness," I say.
Ninesh looks at me dismayed.
" We could ask some friends round here?"  I suggest.
" Well if we going to meet up with some friends, we might as well do it at the pub," says Ninesh, cheering up, " It's probably easier for everyone to meet in town. What's the point of everyone coming here?"
" Well," I say, " everyone around us would be our friends, we wouldn't have to shout to hear each other and we could drink better quality alcohol much more cheaply."
Ninesh is not convinced.
From the moment he turned 18 he has loved the pub culture.
A place to hang out with your friends away from your parents.
A place to meet new people and try out new drinks.
A  place to reinvent yourself and become the person you always wanted to be.
A place to sit nursing a beer, putting the world to rights with your mates.
Going to your "local," was just what everyone did on a Friday and Saturday night

But that was back in the day.
Back in the day when everyone had a favourite local.
Back in the day when every pub prided itself on being unique and different..
Back in the day when publicans  invested time and energy in their customer, because they cared whether or not they came back.
Back in the day when you could walk into the pub and be greeted by familiar faces and the person behind the bar would already be pulling your favourite pint.
But those days are gone.
Most of the pubs, in Chichester anyway, are chains , less dingy but less personal, magnolia and beige to their extremely characterless cores.
" I'm just going down the pub," used to mean, " I'm popping out to spend time with the people I would have chosen as my family if I had been given the choice."
Nowadays it usually means " I'm going out to get as drunk as I can, so don't wait up."
True pub culture seems to be disappearing.
I know it probably still exists in country villages where there is not much else to do in the evening.
But in towns and cities it's getting harder and harder to find.
Pubs are just not the same.
There are fewer and fewer comfy corners where you can sit, beer in hand, putting the world to rights and there are more and more half-lit corners where you can stand, doing shots and using your tongues for something else!
Perhaps it's just that I'm getting old.
Perhaps I've already reached that stage of my life when I'm always secretly thinking: "  In my day it was...."
Pubs, like everything else, cannot be blamed for moving with the times.
I, on the other hand, could be blamed for standing still.
But I can't help mourning the passing of the time when each pub was different, when one was the party pub and one the " live music," pub, when beer was affordable and the person behind the bar knew your name.
There was a time when each small community had it's local pub and that pub was the heart and soul of the local community.
Now pubs compete to be the trendiest place to hang-out.
And instead of being welcoming, there are bouncers on the doors to keep you out.
Being part of "pub culture," no longer means knowing that there is always a stool by the bar with your name on it and a friendly ear to bend when you're feeling lonely.
Being part of the pub culture now means knowing which is the coolest pub to start your weekend pub-crawl from.
It's not about the character of a pub but about which pub has the cheapest alcohol.

Ninesh and I have reached an impasse.
He, a pub worshipper will never stop loving them,  and I, a pub atheist, will never understand why.
But we are free for the night and there are worse ways to spend it than in a noisy, characterless pub- like spending it watching football on TV.
So I take his hand and head for the door.
" Come on then," I say, " which pub shall we go to?"
" Well," he says, " if we go to the Nags Head, the footie should be on...."

I am wrong.... I can't actually think of a worse way to spend the nght!