soulMerlin's Reflections

For Dad

(This is a high-definition video. It will take time to load, as seamless HD streaming is still rare, even with good broadband speeds. I suggest you get it going and put it on pause to load up, while you read (and hopefully enjoy) this post.

 

My Dad was a slight lad, who suffered from rickets, which was not surprising as he went to work down 'the pit' when he was around 12 years old. I can remember him telling me about the 'pit ponies' he helped to take care of underground. Coal-mining was the main industry in the North-East of England in the early 1900's and children regularly worked in dark and dangerous conditions. I find it remarkable that the world has changed so much in 100 years - but not only for the better. Every family bonded together in those days - they had to in order to survive.

I wrote the following in a story about Dad which I called "The Nous" (an ancient word for instinctive wisdom) back in March 07 in the Almanack.

"Dad knew and respected his ‘place’; the second eldest of four sisters and two brothers: Ruth, (Harry-my Dad), younger brother Harold, Ada, Florrie, Esther and Lily; my father knew he was to be the ‘breadwinner’ of the family. At the end of each week, he would bring his pay packet home unopened to give to his ‘Ma’, whose place in turn was to balance the family accounts. In those days, each family unit was a factory-like business enterprise; the eldest daughter would be ‘mother’ to the new offspring of ‘Ma’ and ‘Pa’ and the sons in turn would become the breadwinners. Naturally, given the mutual interdependence of each family member, marriage was taken most seriously. An unsuitable choice of outsider could possibly threaten the family structure and stability. My mother was considered a ‘flighty’ piece of work (she was) and that she would no doubt, lead my father astray (she didn’t – she freed him) Just after they married, my father brought his wage-packet home, unopened and presented it to her. My mother simply handed it back  and asked for her housekeeping"…(click here for more)

When I was around 10 yrs old, Dad showed me a photograph of himself as a boy. I was fascinated to see him not much older than myself, so with the help of a makeshift projector, he enlarged it (above)  and subsequently gave it to me. I thought (and still do) that he had the most loving, direct eyes I had ever seen. I see the picture in my mind whenever I think of him. I like to think that we would have been best friends if we had been boys together.

Dad taught me to develop and print my own photographs. Together we would commandeer the kitchen for an hour (Mam didn't seem to mind going to our outside 'Lav' via the front-door), whilst I stood in the dark and 'see-sawed' a long roll of 120 film through a pudding-basin of 'developer'. My skinny arms used to ache as I held the film in a loop between my hands and ran the film through the solution for around twenty minutes. Dad was a good teacher and I well remember his instructions through the ache.  And his soap and tobacco smell.

He was my hero - yet I was shy of him. I think a sense of isolation and distance was something we both shared. I never cried when he passed away, but the ache in my shoulders is now a gentle ache in my heart.

One Sunday at Spiritualist Church, the visiting medium turned to me and said "Your father is here to tell you he loves you very much and to say sorry for the distance between you both when he was alive." The congregation fell about laughing when I stood up and blurted out "It wasn't his fault...It was mine!"

It was this sense of melancholy and gentle sadness, which I find so often goes together with love and beauty, that first attracted me to "Old Friends" and "Bookends" by Simon and Garfunkel. Paul Simon's poetic lyrics and music had reached a zenith with their "Bookends" album. Like night and day, happiness and sadness are an inseperable part of our lives. 

Sunlight through teardrops can create rainbows

 

So this video is for Dad, who taught me so much.

henry

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The Odyssey ~ Christina's Telephone

Christina's death came as an almighty shock, a total body-blow that stunned me, both mentally and physically. I had  previously considered myself an Agnostic, which I considered as a 'get-out' clause in my 'Atheist's Contract', that allowed for  the 'Unexplainable'. In other words, 'an Afterlife Insurance'. The wake of her passing affected my spiritual development in many profound ways.

Although I had many spiritual experiences around that time,  the particular event below has given me the most tangible proof' of an afterlife I have ever received. As the factor of 'Belief' is not brought into the equation, my tangible proof' seems to withstand the interrogation of doubt and 'reasonable' thought.

It helps to anchor my belief.

The morning after Christina died, I forced myself to get dressed and go to the town centre. My new grief had started to attack like the cutting of a knife. One moment I would be literally doubled up with sorrow and the next, I would find I could function for a short while. During one numb period that at least gave me some respite, I drifted into a bookstore.

I was floating just above and slightly to the right of myself - I watched as I went along the shelves as I  looked for something that might stop or  lessen the pain.  I opened a book by a prominent spiritual medium and found myself reading about  spirits and how they sometimes make contact through electronic equipment such as radios, TV’s and telephones. This was the sort of re-assurance and proof I so desperately needed.

Later that evening my friend Debbie dropped by to check up on me. I remember Debbie remarking how tense and strange she felt, which I thought was understandable, as she had gone through the ordeal of my mother being taken ill, while I was rehearsing a show in Bristol and had stayed with her in the ambulance and at the hospital, until she passed away nearly three hours later. I arrived about ten minutes after she died and although I regretted it at the time,  I now take solace in the knowledge that people often ‘pass on’ when their loved ones are out of the way in order to spare them the ordeal.

We were standing in the kitchen talking about Christina when the house phone rang. Debbie went to answer it; “They’ve rung off” she called from the living room. There was silence, but a few moments later Debbie spoke again: “It was your mother” Debbie had dialled 1471 to identify the caller and the number recorded was my mother’s mobile telephone.

Faced with the reality of Christina’s death, my 'fair-weather' belief had already begun to cloud. Although I had the constant feeling that she (and many other spirits or forces) were around me, when the chips were down, I did not really consider a belief in the afterlife as anything more than a cushion to soften the harsh reality of unavoidable oblivion.   This was a glimmer of hope - If the telephone call was a genuine contact from my mother, the none-existence of an after-life would become the least likely possibility. 

I remembered that I had put Christina’s phone in the inside pocket of my jacket  which was hanging over the back of a chair in the dining room. I carefully removed the phone, looked at ‘calls made’ and sure enough, a call was listed as having been made from the mobile to the house phone, some two minutes earlier.

Debbie and I were stunned; we repeatedly checked the mobile and the house phone to try and find a logical reason. Debbie wondered why the call had been made to the house phone and not to my  mobile? To me it seemed ‘right’ that  my mother would have tried to contact us both, as Debbie had taken care of Christina over the previous two and a half months and had been her last contact before she died. The more I considered it, the more I became convinced that my mother was still around and in some way, still ‘herself’.

Maybe it was simply a telephone malfunction - but if so, who or what caused the malfunction? It is part of my nature to look for a logical material reason, no matter how extreme and convoluted the co-incidental sequence becomes, rather than simply accept the most likely explanation.

                                                                             ~

¹  ‘Talking to Heaven’ by James Van Praagh, published by Piatkus – www.piatkus.co.uk. JVP asserts that spirits have an affinity with electronic media – Telephones and Answering Machines. “After someone dies, it is possible to receive a phone call and no one is on the other end of the line. Or you may actually hear the voice of the spirit. In some cases the voice has been recorded on answering machines” ~ James Van Praagh.

© soulMerlin

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