• About

Who By Fire

~ High ordeals and common trials

Who By Fire

Monthly Archives: Aug 2014

Sunshiny Day: Justice for Nico.

22 Fri Aug 2014

Posted by Kara Chrome in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

#justiceforNico, Commemoration, mothers, siblings

B7D-7825-Sunflower-2

Rosi Reed has asked that on 22 August, the second anniversary of her son Nico’s death, friends ‘fill the world with sunflowers’ in memory of  Nico, and ‘all the happiness, love and laughter he brought into the world’.

If you have a twitter or Facebook account, please change your profile picture to a sunflower on Friday, ‘in memory of Nico and all the precious and loved young people who have died needless deaths, deaths by indifference, by neglect, by poor practice and by ignorance.’

Rosi has told me that Nico was ‘a total music-head’.   I don’t know what his preferred musical genres were, but  I hope his family will feel that the following are true to Nico’s sunny spirit, (even though I suspect he himself might well have considered them fatally old-school and uncool).  And I hope they like the sunflowers – and the sunflower-coloured uke.

 

I can see clearly now, the rain is gone,
I can see all obstacles in my way
Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind
It’s gonna be a bright, bright
Sunshiny day.
I think I can make it now, the pain is gone
All of the bad feelings have disappeared
Here is the rainbow I’ve been prayin’ for
It’s gonna be a bright, bright
Sunshiny day.
Look all around, there’s nothin’ but blue skies
Look straight ahead, nothin’ but blue skies….
I can see clearly now, the rain is gone,
I can see all obstacles in my way
Here is the rainbow I’ve been prayin’ for
It’s gonna be a bright, bright
Sunshiny day.

 

Bring me sunshine in your smile,
Bring me laughter all the while,
In this world where we live
there should be more happiness,
So much joy you can give
to each brand new bright tomorrow,
Make me happy through the years,
Never bring me any tears,
Let your arms be as warm as the sun from up above,
Bring me fun, bring me sunshine, bring me love.

Bring me sunshine in your eyes,
Bring me rainbows from blue skies,
Life’s too short to be spent
having anything but fun,
We can be so content
if we gather little sunbeams,
Be light-hearted all day long,
Keep me singing a happy song,
Let your arms be as warm as the sun from up above,
Bring me fun, bring me sunshine, bring me love.

The Letter of Condolence.

20 Wed Aug 2014

Posted by Kara Chrome in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

#justiceforLB, #justiceforNico, Commemoration, preventable deaths, true stories

 

 

Home Counties
— July 200-

Dear Roy, Janet, Archie, Heather and Innes,

I am so sad and sorry to hear of Richard’s death.   Thank-you for letting me know; I very much appreciate your consideration at this dreadfully difficult time.

In a way I suppose I wasn’t surprised; Richard has been so unwell the last couple of years that I have been half – or at any rate a quarter – expecting such a call any time these past eighteen months.  But I was shocked, the kind of shock where your mind starts playing tricks on you.  All Sunday, I kept finding myself heading for the phone to call him and say, ‘Guess what, I’ve been speaking with Janet and you’ll never believe the story she was telling me…’

I’m going to miss him terribly.  I doubt I’ll ever meet anybody else whose sense of humour chimes quite so closely with mine.  Richard never seemed fazed by my obscure jokes; indeed, he usually went one better and capped them.  It doesn’t seem credible that there will be no more of our daft conversations in future.

The last time I spoke to him, just before he went into hospital, we were talking about his visit to Heather in August, and planning to meet up.  At our last meeting, Eldest was only a fourteen-week, barely visible bump (I remember I was still in non-maternity clothes, although my waistbands were beginning to pinch).  Richard always seemed to like hearing about E and his funny doings, and told me all about Isabelle and Odile and how he was receiving hand-drawn birthday cards these days, so I was looking forward to introducing E to him.  I still don’t think I’ve quite taken in that they’re never going to meet.

I have heard it said that a person isn’t really gone until the echoes of their actions die out in the world; until the bread that she baked has been eaten, the clock that he wound has run down.  If so, as long as I enjoy listening to complex music that I wouldn’t otherwise have attempted to understand; every time I look up at buildings and notice details, instead of walking along like most people with my eyes fixed on the pavement; and most of all, as long as I remember that courage is not necessarily about sudden spectacular action, but can consist of doggedly carrying on – and on – trying to do ordinary things in the face of ever-present, extraordinary obstacles, then Richard, who taught me, will still be here.  And if, as I would hope to, I can teach E a little of the same things, maybe Richard will be here even when I am not.  Still, the world is a great deal poorer without him, although I am immeasurably richer for having known him.

Don’t get me wrong – I’ve no intention of turning Richard into a plaster saint.  Heaven knows he could be prickly and unapproachable; get right up people’s noses and be a complete pain in the backside (that’s the sort of mixed metaphor he always laughs at me for).  And on a bad day, he could be a world-class moaner – but then he had an unfairly large share of material to work with.  On the good days he was charming and amusing, and everybody I know who got to see that side of him remembers him with affection and admiration.

I enclose copies of a couple of photographs, which I hope you will like to have.  They epitomise for me the two sides of Richard as I shall remember him – the introspective artist and the cheerful (and always immaculately, if sometimes eccentrically, -dressed) nutter.

One last thing, which I mention with some hesitation.  Many years ago, Richard told me that when he died, he would prefer to be buried rather than cremated, and that he would like a headstone carved from a local stone which would weather into illegibility over a hundred years or so.  That way, he said, there would be somewhere for people who had loved him to go and visit, and when there was no-one who remembered him, the stone would gradually disappear.  I realise, of course, that he may since have changed his mind, and left alternative instructions accordingly; and that equally you may have made other arrangements which will suit you better.  I mention it only in case it may be helpful; if it is not, please ignore it and forgive me for bringing it up.

Please accept my sympathy as you go about saying goodbye to Richard.  I’m not coping very well; it must be so much harder for you.

Yours sincerely,

Kara

Vulnerability, vengeance and vileness.

20 Wed Aug 2014

Posted by Kara Chrome in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

#justiceforLB, #justiceforNico, care in the community, High Ordeals, kindness, preventable deaths, true stories

After his kidney failure diagnosis, Richard never went back to Rigg.  Instead he went home… except for the three-times-a-week, eight-hour dialysis sessions at the Infirmary.

His diet, already carbohydrate-controlled because of his diabetes, had to incorporate a whole new set of restrictions, with limitations on protein and liquid, and reductions in salt, potassium and phosphates.  The hospital dietician gave him booklets specifying a suitable diet, but most of the recommended meal plans consisted of foods he either didn’t much care for or actively disliked.  He sent me the lists of restrictions, and I worked out ways to modify dishes he liked to eat, so as to keep him within his mineral and fluid limits, while providing enough of the right kinds of carbohydrate.  He was assigned home helps, whose job was to come in daily and cook for him as well as doing the cleaning; it was vital to provide suitable recipes for them to use.

The thrice-weekly haemodialysis was not only onerous but tiring.  After a while, the Infirmary offered an alternative therapy: continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis or CAPD.  In younger patients like himself, Richard was told, this method of dialysis often gave better results than haemodialysis and could help stave off the need for a kidney transplant.

Being set up on CAPD entailed an operation to fit a catheter through Richard’s abdominal wall, with internal tubing in his abdominal cavity.  Dialysis fluid was poured in through the catheter, left for a few hours to absorb waste through the walls of the blood-vessels supplying his guts, and then drained out through the same catheter before fresh solution was added.  Because of his sight problems, Richard could not manage the dialysis solution changes or the catheter care by himself, so nurses from the District team came in three times a day to help.

Changing dialysis solution is not a quick procedure.  It took about 20 minutes to drain the used solution and another ten to infuse a fresh bagful, and it was vital that the whole procedure be carried out with scrupulous attention to hygiene, to keep the catheter and cap sterile.  Dialysis fluid contains quite a lot of glucose; any germs that got down the catheter would find themselves in bug heaven – with food, warmth, moisture and every opportunity for multiplying wildly and causing life-threatening illness.

It was not long before Richard’s CAPD treatment began causing him problems.  The District Nurses were, almost without exception, kind, efficient and meticulous.  However, they were all under time-pressure, and one worried him considerably.  “I swear, she’s not cleaning down properly between emptying the used fluid and infusing the new bag”, he told me.  “I know I can’t see what she’s doing, but there’s nothing wrong with my ears – or my ability to count time – and I know she’s not doing all the steps that the others do.”

He tried speaking to her about the steps that she was going through, but she took the huff at having her way of working questioned, and a couple of weeks afterwards, the phone call sounded not just worried, but frightened.  “That clarty besom was here again, and she’s still bloody furious with me.  She’s been downright rude to me today – speaking to me like I’m a naughty child, and I’m absolutely sure she didn’t wash her hands before she got started.  She didn’t clean round the catheter thoroughly, either.  I think she’s doing it deliberately, to pay me back for calling her out.  And she was really rough – she was pulling at the tube.  My belly hurts.”

I encouraged him to ask for her to be taken off his team, but it was too late.  A few days later, the drained fluid was cloudy and foul, Richard had a high temperature, and he had to be readmitted to hospital, where he was found to be suffering from MRSA peritonitis.  Once antibiotics had seen off the infection, the catheter had to be removed, and that was the end of his CAPD.

Up until this point, Richard’s haemodialysis had been carried out via a neck line, but now that he was going to be permanently on haemodialysis, he was told he would need another operation to create an arterio-venous fistula in his arm.  The procedure would involve connecting an artery directly to a vein.  In the weeks following the operation, the increased blood flow and higher arterial pressure would make the walls of the vein dilate and thicken so that it could be used for repeated, frequent needle insertions without collapsing.

For months, Richard refused the procedure.  The prospect of subjecting himself to further anaesthesia scared him.  He was now experiencing chest pains and breathlessness that were put down to diabetes-induced cardiovascular problems  and he did not want to die on an operating table.  Eventually, however, he got to the point where continuing with the neck line was becoming less and less tenable, and he agreed to the fistula surgery.

As usual, he called me the day before he was due for admission.  Although he was still worried about the anaesthesia, he was beginning to plan for the extra freedom that the fistula could offer.  It would be easier to access dialysis away from home, so he might be able to visit family again – something he had not been able to do for over eighteen months.  If he came to visit his sister in London, would I come up to Town to see him, as I had done when he visited before?

We had ourselves a lovely time planning what we might do.  His sister lived not far from a particularly beautiful park; if it were good weather – and there was every chance of pleasant weather in August or September – it would be the perfect place to go.  Richard had begun experimenting with photography, taking close-ups of natural objects and enlarging the resulting pictures to A3 size so that he could pick out details.  He knew from previous visits that the park had some trees with interestingly gnarled bark that would make excellent subjects…

Four days later, I received a call from his stepmother.  Richard had, as usual, been admitted to the Infirmary a couple of days in advance of his planned theatre date, so that the hospital could be sure that his diabetes and dialysis were all stabilised prior to surgery.  On the day before he was due the operation, his consultant had come to see him on the ward round.  Richard had been in fine form, joking with the surgeon, teasing the medical students, and flirting with his nurse.  According to her colleagues, the nurse had returned to the central station in a high state of giggle to confide some of Richard’s more outrageous sallies, before setting off again to take him for his dialysis.  When she got back to his bed after five minutes away, she had found him still sitting propped against his pillows; but he was dead.  She was so shocked that the ward sister had had to send her home for the rest of the day.

Subsequently, the autopsy found that Richard’s heart problems and chest pains had not been due to diabetic vascular disease, but to pericarditis – an inflammation of the membrane that surrounds the heart – which had led to a build-up of fluid around his heart.  The pressure of the fluid had finally simply stopped his heart from beating.  And the underlying cause of the inflammation was infection by MRSA, the same strain of MRSA as had caused his peritonitis.  The pathologist thought it likely that the bug had been lingering ever since the original episode, had somehow crossed the diaphragm and found itself a nice safe hiding-place in Richard’s pericardium.

Instead of having a day out in the park, a two-year-old Eldest and I went to the funeral, on a summer day that blazed as bright as Richard’s hair under a sky no bluer than his eyes.  People had come from all over; schoolfriends from Richard’s home area, family from London and the Home Counties, a coachload of friends and ex-colleagues from Scotland.  I travelled by train and met up at the station with University friends coming from the other direction.

The curtains did not close around the coffin at the crematorium. As the congregation filed quietly outside, Richard’s father stood with his hands on the polished wood and his head on his hands.  The bright blue eyes that Richard had inherited were drenched with tears for his son, while his remaining children hugged each other and wept also.

I did not think about the ‘clarty besom’ at the time, but I have since wondered whether seeing that scene would have caused her any twinges of conscience about her interactions with Richard, or whether she would simply have shrugged.  I suspect the shrug to have been more likely, on the basis a person prone to a twinging conscience probably wouldn’t react with anger and vengefulness towards a patient who was frightened and in need of reassurance.  And a person who could feel true compassion for a bereaved family would be unlikely to behave vilely towards a vulnerable person, however annoying they might find them.

Forward Planning.

18 Mon Aug 2014

Posted by Kara Chrome in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

appropriate vocabulary, true stories

Eldest, consulting the National Trust guidebook:  “… and if we’re taking our own food we can’t use the tables, they’re for café patrons only.  Better take the picnic blankets if you don’t want a Spanish thank-you.”

E’s Papa, confused:  A what?

E, grinning:  A Spanish thank-you.

E’s Papa, suspecting that if there’s a joke, it’s on him:  A WHAT?

E and me, in chorus:  A grassy arse.  <high-five>.

Common Trials? The London Trips.

16 Sat Aug 2014

Posted by Kara Chrome in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

#justiceforLB, #LBBill, independent living, kindness

Since we’re not getting to go away on holiday this year, we took a few runs up to Town this week.  Eldest wanted to visit the Imperial War Museum and Grenouille fancied the Nat. Hist., so we made all the detailed arrangements and set off on a ten o’clock train each day.  G can walk, but only for so long; a whole day of Shanks’ pony on pavements is not possible.  We had to take the wheelchair with us.

I was not looking forward to it.  The London I remembered from my undergraduate and early working days was a grimy, sharp-elbowed, every-man-for-himself place.  As delightful as our neighbours were, keeping a kindly eye out for us and never giving us grief over our stupider antics, people in the mass, in public spaces,  seemed to live in a permanent state of hurry and shove.  They shouldered you on public transport, cut across you as you walked down the pavement, were scarily pushy as drivers.   In the early 2000’s, when Eldest was a toddler, I travelled across Town to visit friends a few times and do not have good memories of negotiating the Tube’s tunnels and escalators with a small person of limited mobility while lugging the inevitable backpack plus an umbrella-fold buggy.  In fact, on more than one occasion, we were treated to expletive-laden castigation from other passengers for being slow and in the way.  The beautifully-spoken young man in the Crombie overcoat who turned back at London Bridge station to help me get the pushchair up a flight of steps was such an exception to the rule that I have never forgotten him.

However, the Underground system now is significantly cleaner and pleasanter than I remember it being.  In fact the whole of London seems cleaner than I recollect it, perhaps for being less crowded owing to the congestion charge; and I was bowled over by how helpful people were – busy and businesslike, but courteous with it.

Underground staff opened the wide gates for us when they saw that the ticket-slots in the barriers were a bit of a stretch from behind the chair-handles.  Passengers offered to help carry the chair down flights of steps and nobody barged or tutted as G slowly took stairs one step at a time, while clinging on to the rail on one side and Eldest’s arm on the other, even though, between them, my offspring were taking up the whole width of the stair.  On the trains, people leapt out of the priority seats so that G and I could sit down; and when we got up, other people damned the officious warning notices and stuck suitcases in the doors so that they couldn’t close before G had time to get off.  Standing in lengthy queues for admission to the museums, we found ourselves pulled out by staff and escorted straight in without having to wait.  Other visitors opened doors, held lifts, warned people to hang back so that G could take pictures from the chair without being photobombed.  Drivers stopped at Zebra crossings while we were still on the pavement.

The kindness was not reserved just for G.  At a self-service café with a terrace, I watched a young staff-member find a table for a middle-aged wheelchair-user; move chairs so he could access it; bring him a menu and offer to make his purchases for him so that he did not have to squeeze through the door to the counter; bring him food, drink, condiments, crockery, cutlery, change, receipt (“please check I have the prices correct, sir”) and – spontaneous finishing touch to perfect service – a full napkin-dispenser.

Now, I don’t know how Londoners are with people who have invisible disabilities.  I know the wheelchair is like a handy flag that proclaims ‘Here is someone who needs extra consideration.’ Maybe we were particularly lucky, what with it being the holidays, and lovely sunny days at that.  But I felt a distinct difference in the general atmosphere and attitudes.  Perhaps this new, unexpected helpfulness is the lasting Games (and Last Leg?) legacy.  Long may it continue.

When the ordinary Londoner can be so considerate, when half of voters are willing to pay more tax to support valued services like the NHS, why on earth is the UK facing the first ever UN enquiry into ‘grave and systemic’ violations of disabled people’s rights?  How can this have been got so wrong?  Why does the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions refuse to accept his own Department’s assessment of the adverse effects of benefit changes on disabled people?  Why is the latest post-Winterbourne initiative already shaping up to be even more of a retrogressive shambles than the collapsed Winterbourne View Joint Improvement Programme?

It is, of course, for the same reason that LB was left to die: care-less-ness at the highest levels.  It has to stop.  The LB Bill needs to become law, for the sake of all people with disabilities, whether or not they use a wheelchair.

Please, take a look at what needs to be done.  Pick an action that you can manage, follow it through and let #LBBill know what you have done so that they can keep track.

Thank you.

Not Forgotten.

09 Sat Aug 2014

Posted by Kara Chrome in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

#justiceforLB, Commemoration, First World War

So there I was, with my candle, at 10pm on Monday night. All down the road, the houses were dark, except for single flames in the front windows. It was curiously impressive. I don’t remember anything like this since the Dunblane shootings. It seems that most families in our area still feel a personal connection to the Great War.

On my mother’s side of the family, both my grandfather and my great-grandfather served in the Great War. Grandad was tall, a lanky, gangly teenager. ‘Papa’, my great-grandfather A, was a short, stocky, fortyish French paysan. Neither of them ever talked about what happened to them in those four years. Grandad was gassed and evacuated to a hospital in Britain, where a group photograph was taken of him and his fellows, tiered on benches and chairs like a school class, flanked by QA nurses who wore white veils stiffened into wide kite shapes. When I asked him about the photo, he told me he had a special non-regimental hospital uniform to wear while he was there, but that was as much information as he ever shared. Papa A., being over forty, was in an non-combattant role. I have a notion he ran part of the supply lines. He sent a great many patriotic postcards home to the thirteen-year-old who would become my grandmother. The cards, and her replies, ended up in a shoebox with the photos of Grandad in uniform.

Another of the photos in the shoebox miscellany was a tiny, cigarette-card sized print, in blurry black and white, showing a tombstone. It wasn’t until about ten years ago, when I scanned it into the computer and magnified it, that I was able to read the writing: a memorial to two men of my great-grandfather’s surname, one who went missing in action and the other who died of wounds a couple of years after the end of the war. It wasn’t a standard French military tombstone, although it had crossed tricolores and ‘Pour la France’ at the top. My mother thought it might be a family-erected stone in the cemetery of Papa’s home town. Short of making a visit to the town and trailing round graveyards, there seemed to be no way of finding out more.

Back in March, I caught the end of a BBC programme about writing a letter to the Unknown Soldier. I didn’t realise until much later that this was the Unknown Soldier at Paddington station, by which time I had already written a letter to my family’s own Unknown Soldier. It didn’t seem quite appropriate to submit my letter – in French, to a French soldier – to the BBC website, so I stuck it on the blog. And then I began to wonder….

Eldest went on a GCSE history trip to the Belgian battlefields last year and although he was too far west to visit the place where his great-great-great-uncle disappeared, he did come back with a wealth of information on how the various armies were deployed and a laundry-list of websites that detailed different aspects of war history. I began searching online for websites related to the battlefield where l’oncle P disappeared and, four or five sites in, I came up with one that invited enquiries. In my most formal French, I asked with curlicued politeness whether the blogsite owner might possibly see his way clear to being able to indicate to me, if and when convenient, where I might be able to find some supplementary information on the soldier P.B., who went missing in action at La Harazée on an unknown date in the January of a year I couldn’t make out for funeral wreaths. I thanked the site owner for graciously condescending to read my note and in advance for any help that he or she might feel inclined to offer, apologised for any errors of French that I might have made, and begged him or her to be so kind as to accept the expression of my most distinguished sentiments.

As it turned out, Monsieur C, the website owner, was on holiday, but despite having a limited internet connection, he was super-enthusiastic and super-efficient, managing within 24 hours to turn up l’oncle P’s death certificate and send me an electronic copy, with promises of further information when he should be home and back on broadband.

The death certificate gave me l’oncle P’s inscription number and regiment, and from that I managed to get his full service record. Searching for P’s service record taught me how the database ran searches, so I was able to look up Papa A as well. It took a couple of runs, because it transpired that Papa A was a little older than I had thought, but however fuzzily I searched, I could not find any records of the other brother, L, who was mentioned on the tombstone.

The portal to the military databases also gave access to the civil census microfiches, so I tried looking through those, starting with Papa A’s birth year. Papa A’s surname was an uncommon one, and his mother’s surname was even more unusual, so I was pretty sure that the young couple I found with the right surnames were Papa A’s parents, although the census-taker had got into a fine old muddle with the Christian names, calling Jean-Marie plain ‘Jean’ and somehow managing to turn Cathérine into Jeanne Marie. Following through the census rolls that appeared at five-yearly intervals, I found them – correctly named – with three, then five children, including l’oncle L. He was the fourth child, five years younger than Papa A, who was the eldest. L’oncle P came fifth, four years later. I wondered if there was a child in between L and P who did not survive for very long. I watched Jean-Marie’s (presumably widowed) mother move in her mid-sixties and turn 70, then 75 and 80, by which time there were four boys and three girls aged from 18 to 2 in the family, and they had moved house, to what I sincerely hope were larger premises. Five years after that, the eldest boy and girl had left home and Granny was gone too.

Once I knew l’oncle L’s birth year, I could find his military records, containing terse notes of his having been first posted to the auxiliary service, then sent home to convalesce, because of a chest wound caused by a shell explosion that had left him with a long scar down his left thorax, adhesions to his ribs, and with limited movement in his left arm. A later military fitness board discharged him, because the scar had contracted and was interfering with his breathing, leaving him suffering from emphysema and prone to bronchitis and pneumonia. Now I understand the ‘suites de ses blessures’ mentioned on the gravestone.

While I’ve been delving into my family history, Dr. Sara Ryan has also been wading through documents about the death of a family member this week: paperwork from Southern Health NHS Trust related to the drowning of her son, LB. LB’s preventable death causes his mother rawest, most searing grief, yet her route to obtaining the papers has been far more onerous than mine, and she has not been met with cheery helpfulness, but with obstruction, insensitivity, jobsworthiness and nitpickery. On Monday she was having a major, if unsurprising, wobble, tweeting: Eventually, even the most supportive of supporters will think ‘Blow me, is she still banging on about her son who died an age ago?’

Well, sorry to contradict you and all that, Dr. Ryan, but no. If my great-grand-uncles P and L, who have been dead for ninety-nine-and-a-half and ninety-four years respectively, still matter, are still thought about – and they do, and they are – then LB doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in a steel foundry of falling through the memory net. We, the people who have been part of #justiceforLB, are just as gobsmacked as ever over the outstanding shiteness of Sloven Health; we entertain fantasies of grabbing the CEO of the CPS, and the DPP, by the collars and banging their heads together in rhythm while we chant “When the fuck are you going to pull the finger out?”; we are pitching in ideas for the #LBBill, to try to make life better in future for people with all kinds of disabilities. Life was bound to be harder without the wonderful multicoloured and multifaceted cushion that was #107days, but although we may not be as visible, please believe that LB’s supporters and yours are not going away.

What I said to my then-unknown Uncle on Monday goes for LB as well. We never met you, but we love you.

Lettre centenniale à P, Un Soldat Inconnu.

05 Tue Aug 2014

Posted by Kara Chrome in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

1914-1918, We will remember them.

 

Le 3 août 2014

Mon cher oncle P

Je ne commence qu’à vous adresser, et déjà j’ai un problème : vouvoyer ou tutoyer?  Ma mère – une des petites-filles de votre frère A – m’a dit qu’elle le tutoyait, parce qu’il était de la famille.  Elle l’appelait ‘Papa’, ainsi que sa mère et ses tantes.

Moi, je ne l’ai ni tutoyé ni vouvoyé, parce que la seule fois que je lui ai rendu visite, je n’avais pas encore dix-huit mois et je ne balbutiais que quelques paroles enfantines d’anglais.  Je lui ai montré mon nounours préféré, dont la peluche noire et blanche devenait clairsemée à force d’être serrée dans mes bras et caressée par mes petites mains, et j’ai essayé de lui expliquer que c’était un panda.  Selon ma mère, lorsqu’il m’a entendu crier « Pa !  Pa ! », il a cru que je l’appelais ‘Papa’ à mon tour, et il en était tout ému. Si j’avais compris alors les nuances du français, je crois que j’aurais eu envie de le vouvoyer; un homme qui porte une moustache aussi magnifique et impressionnante que la sienne est digne de tout le respect qu’on peut lui offrir.  Je me sens donc encline à vous vouvoyer aussi.  Je ne sais pas si vous portiez la moustache, mais vous êtes de sa génération et vous avez fait le sacrifice suprême.

Selon ma mère, Papa – A – ne parlait jamais de vous, ni de votre frère L, qui est mort deux ans après la guerre, le 17 juillet 1920, des suites de ses blessures.  Je ne sais donc pas comment L a été blessé et je ne sais pas non plus ce que faisait A pendant la guerre.  Il s’était inscrit à l’armée française et j’ai une photographie de studio qui le montre en uniforme, un homme dans la force de l’âge, les jambes écartées, les pieds plantés, les bras croisés, les pans de son pardessus boutonnés à l’envers pour en montrer la doublure, et sa moustache magnifiquement hérissée.  Pendant son service militaire, il écrivait des cartes postales à sa fille aînée, ma grand’mère, R, mais ces notes ne contiennent que de tendres questions concernant le bien-être de la fillette qu’il saluait dans un anglais hésitant, ‘My dear littel R’, avant de continuer en français.  Il n’y a là-dedans aucune information concernant sa propre situation.

Les réponses de R, soigneusement rangées dans une vieille boîte à chaussures, commencent toutes ‘Mon cher petit Papa’.  Vous écrivait-elle ‘Mon cher Oncle’?  Aviez-vous vos propres filles pour vous envoyer de jolis petits billets, auxquels vous avez répondu par des cartes postales patriotiques ?  Ou aviez-vous des fils qui vous ont suivi dans la boue des tranchées ?  Etiez-vous patriote comme A, qui disait, « Si j’avais eu trois fils, au lieu de trois filles, j’en aurais fait trois soldats pour la France » ?  Je n’en sais rien.

Je ne connais que votre nom, et que vous êtes disparu à La Harazée une journée de janvier.  Je ne sais pas la date précise; je ne sais même pas quelle année.  Sur la toute petite photographie de votre pierre tombale, qui est la seule évidence que je possède de votre existence, les chiffres indiquant votre âge et la date de votre décès sont obscurcis par les fleurs des couronnes mortuaires.  Ma mère croit que la tombe serait dans un cimetière de Côtes d’Armor; peut-être celui de la petite commune dont le nom vous sert de patronyme.

J’aimerais y aller pour vous rendre visite, pour vous dire ‘Merci’ en personne pour ce que vous avez fait, pour vous parler de la grande famille qui vit maintenant en Angleterre, au Canada, en Inde. Est-ce que je vous trouverai dans le cimetière du village?  Ou êtes-vous resté dans les bois de l’Argonne où vous êtes disparu?  Devrais-je aller à La Harazée pour vous retrouver?

Je crois que non.  Si vous êtes quelque part, ce sera dans ce paysage de Bretagne qui vous a formé, ce paysage légèrement ondulant et rocheux, qui se recroqueville sous un ciel énorme, balayé par les vents frais et salés de l’Atlantique.

Dormez bien, mon oncle.  Vous avez fait tout ce que vous pouviez quand votre pays avait besoin de vous.  Personne n’aurait pu plus faire.  Je ne viens pas déranger votre sommeil tant mérité.  Cent ans après le début de la Grande Guerre, je veux simplement dire, de la part de la famille toute entière: nous ne vous avons jamais rencontré, mais nous vous aimons.

Affectueusement,

Votre arrière-petite-nièce

K

High Ordeals: The Unanswerable Questions.

01 Fri Aug 2014

Posted by Kara Chrome in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Eldest, sounding concerned:  Mum, Grenouille’s just asked me what it’s like to be normal…

Me, later:  G, how would you feel about telling me what you meant when you asked E about what it’s like to be normal?

G:  I just … wondered what it’s like to not have special needs?  And big health problems?

Me, heart sinking: Can you remember what it was like before your health problems started?

G:  <Shakes head>

Me:  OK.  So, um, what do you think being normal is like?

G, after consideration:  Boring.  <long pause>   But … maybe it’s fun?

Subscribe

  • Entries (RSS)
  • Comments (RSS)

Archives

  • May 2022
  • Dec 2021
  • Nov 2021
  • Mar 2021
  • Oct 2020
  • Mar 2020
  • Nov 2019
  • Jun 2019
  • May 2019
  • Apr 2019
  • Mar 2019
  • Feb 2019
  • Dec 2018
  • Aug 2018
  • Jun 2018
  • Apr 2018
  • Feb 2018
  • Jan 2018
  • Dec 2017
  • Oct 2017
  • Sep 2017
  • Aug 2017
  • Jul 2017
  • Jun 2017
  • May 2017
  • Mar 2017
  • Nov 2016
  • Oct 2016
  • Sep 2016
  • Aug 2016
  • Jun 2016
  • May 2016
  • Apr 2016
  • Mar 2016
  • Dec 2015
  • Oct 2015
  • Sep 2015
  • Aug 2015
  • Jul 2015
  • Jun 2015
  • May 2015
  • Apr 2015
  • Mar 2015
  • Feb 2015
  • Jan 2015
  • Dec 2014
  • Nov 2014
  • Oct 2014
  • Sep 2014
  • Aug 2014
  • Jul 2014
  • Jun 2014
  • May 2014
  • Apr 2014
  • Mar 2014

Categories

  • Uncategorized

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in

Blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • Who By Fire
    • Join 52 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Who By Fire
    • Customise
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...