Day nineteen of Blog - the end?

I set myself a goal of nineteen days of blogging and this is the last post of the nineteenth day.  Time to decide to stop or not.  I am delighted to have kept it up for the length of time I set myself.  Now the question is do I stop?  Let me know what you think.

It sounds  depressing, the title, but  lifted my spirits a bit!

Death Duties

She was nine months pregnant  with eight  children, in her early forties and her own mother was dying, quietly but remorselessly in her front room.  It was difficult to grasp the size of her burdens.  I remember feeling genuinely appalled.  We’d known Paul and Pat for years. Had even been on holiday with them and their kids.  Their huge home always rang with laughter, babies, toddlers and smiling older children peeked out from wherever you looked.  As new parents ourselves we loved their easy acceptance of family.  Their home was so full there was always room for more and perhaps the fact that you too squeezed in made no difference at all.  How many homes feel like that nowadays? 

When I complained about the tribulations of three children Pat comforted me with, “Yes, three is by far the worst. After three then the older ones can really help and there’s much less work.”   I could sense she meant it and her eight-year-old daughter was more competent with a baby than I.  Years of practice meant she knew when milk/ nappy change/ sleep was required and did it all quickly and quietly while singing a tune popular at the time.  I was amazed at  this home of abundance and would come to marvel and to learn.  So many people are willing to give you loads of advice about bringing up children, but invariably the trained professional who gives it is on her second marriage, and despite knowing all the theory, has the most appalling and obnoxious children imaginable.  To me, Pat managed. She did it and deeds mean much more than words.  Paul, her husband, was a quiet spoken intellectual with a ready smile and impenetrable calm.  How he pursued his studies in that house of children was a mystery he kept to himself. 

On one such visit to their house Pat broke the news that her mother was dying and had moved into their home to spend her last few months.  Pat was hugely pregnant and as she told us of hospitals and doctors and treatments that did no good, the tears fell.  Her mother had been a special women with infinite supplies of love and, although in her eighties, was going to be terribly missed.  We commiserated, distressed that on top of her newly expected baby this burden had been added.  I was telling her how sorry I was, how difficult it must be for her, how I wished I could help in some way.  She answered very clearly and I will never forget what she said, “All my life my mother has given me everything she possibly could and I can’t tell you the honour of having her here in our home now”.  Apparently all her brothers and sisters had fought to be the one chosen as the home she decided to end her days in but she had chosen Pat’s.   People moan and complain over the smallest things. I know I do, but looking at Pat I realized that whatever the circumstances a wonderful metamorphosis can make even pain and loss a sweet lesson of love and gratitude.  Those with grace and heart do it so easily it makes the rest of us look afresh at this world and ourselves.  What we should be could be and what effort we choose to make that transformation. 

When I observed Pat cope, there was no instant miracle, no sudden sainthood granted.  She wiped up shit, fed, laughed, cried and shouted at the moon but she persevered.  She held hands, wiped brows and constantly turned the pillows so that a cool freshness touched the cheek.  She joked and laughed and turned her mother so that bedsores would not form nor bitterness of mind be allowed to linger and fester.  She made it all look so easy and effortless - as if it were all nothing.  Her mother would wait until only Pat was available before asking to be toileted.  Only Pat did it without showing a trace of disgust, a twinge of resentment or a sad sag of the shoulders.  Her mother’s favourite visitor was a sour old gardener whose ritual greeting to the patient was, “God, are ye still here? Someone should do you a favour and shoot you!”  Pat cringed at his bluntness but saw the honesty was a salve for her mother.  Other visitors drained her, like the relatives who came and had long conversations across the bed that somehow did not include the patient, as if talking around or about the patient sufficed.  When her mother could no longer talk, Pat reminded visitors that the sense of hearing is usually the last sense to be lost.  Imagine the horror of lying listening and being unable to communicate, alone in a vulnerable world of gossips and backbiters.  Pat always kept a one-sided conversation going, telling her the good and bad things happening to everyone. 

Touch became their secret signal long after her mother could no longer talk.  One squeeze for no, two for yes, and three for laughter.  The gardener got most of the laughs.  Then the squeezes stopped.  Still she held her mother’s hand for ages and was silent as if trying to hold on to something too precious to lose.   Dying took time and it drove Pat beyond her limits, into territory no one willingly chooses to go.  Emotionally drained, physically exhausted, she fought tenaciously, coming bounding back determined to stay the course.  She described going up to the roof of a hospital during one set of painful treatments for her mother and screaming and crying and shouting at God at the top of her voice.  Then, emptied, she went down to her mother refreshed and ready once more.  As the end came it seemed impossible that a human being could hold on to life with hardly any flesh on her frame.  There were no more periods of lucidity and it seemed to Pat that her mother had already gone and that this silent shrunken shape was a parody, a husk that had been left behind. 

Still she went on, no longer expecting a response, just talking, stroking and wetting the dry silent lips.  When the end finally came, Pat remembered begging for its deliverance.  It no longer seemed cruel but an act of merciful release.  During the funeral there was laughter once more and it seemed that her mother’s spirit was back in the house again.  Stories were told and memories shared and brought back again and again, as if needed to rub out the sorrow of this past period.  As I looked around the room I saw so many faces that had watched a death coming -  That had learned what love means, what pain, what depths of pain, loving can bring.  A mighty lesson of living and dying had been learned.  I discovered that you couldn’t intellectualize it, pay someone to do it for you, avoid it or deny it.  Death comes for us all.  But when you face that final parting, who will be there for you?  Who will wet your lips?  This is a mighty skill and art, and unfortunately for all of us, there are less and less masters out there and hardly any students prepared to learn.

Writing in Ink

Its been a long day and I have little to say today.  Here's a short piece about teachers and the scars they leave or wounds they heal.

 

 

Writing in Ink

How many years since I wrote in ink

Class room noisy with desks banging, chairs scraping

Dreaded teacher handles us fragile adolescents with harsh dislike

Scrapping our nerves with his assault

Heedless of the life long scars

That will fester and ache in years to come.

Be gentle teachers, be wise gardeners of the soul

See that this plant needs space, this one is dying of water and over here is a seedling completely uprooted

Roll up your sleeves and see

Taking meticulous care to tend these precious saplings

Do it well and future adults will carry the ink marks of your pen with love and gratitude.

Chickens, Dogs, Trees and Justice – Greek Style

Lived on a Greek island for years, a lovely place in so many ways but the legal system was another matter entirely.  Here's a piece trying to get to the underbelly of a Greek justice system.

Chickens, Dogs, Trees and Justice – Greek Style

This week I found myself observing the Greek legal system in operation.  Waiting for my lawyer to be free to meet with me involved a three-hour stint in the number 1 court in Rhodes court building.  Finding myself at the back of the court with a perfect view of the proceedings and nothing else to distract me, this is the tale of that case, not mine.

My lawyer was the prosecuting attorney in what was obviously a long running family feud.  All participants lived out in the country and wore simple clothes, their distinctive accents very guttural and accompanied by hand waving and expressions that ranged from head hanging ( “the poor me, can’t you tell I’m innocent”), performance to the stabbing accusative fingers at the relatives at the back of the court (“They are the guilty ones!”),  to a strange crucified pose that many adopted - their arms outstretched on either side and their chests bared to the court pleading their Christ-like innocence and the evilness of their opponents. 

Given the time it takes for court cases to reach the court in the Greek Justice system things had obviously had time to fester nicely.  What had started as a grudge over land boundaries had grown in a year to the cutting down of the neighbour’s trees.  This was followed sometime later by a chicken-shooting incident that was graphically described.  Having waited 4 years all parties were anxious to have their say in court.  These chickens were duly described along with photographs of their bodies and the truly extraordinary egg producing capacity of these particular birds dwelt on.  The bird-shooting incident within one year had been escalated into the shooting of a family dog.  Tit for tat events followed fast and furious, interspersed with recollections of endless shouting confrontations where each had obviously called the other all the bad names they could think of. 

The actual court case was supposed to be dealing with what had happened on Sept 26 2001 when an assault of one of the parties had occurred.  The magistrate and the lawyers tried in vain to keep the witnesses to the day in question, but having waited 3 years all the participants could do was burst out with the long running history of this feud.  In vain did the magistrate remonstrate and try to cut them off. They were determined to have their full say.  Allegations did not stop with the chickens/dogs and trees incidents but even memories of relatives long dead were hauled into the open, along with descriptions of their tendency to go around chicken killing etc.  The implications were clear.  Both sides wished to demonstrate once and for all that the other side was clearly from an evil bloodline that did bad things not out of honorable revenge but out of sheer badness - like their mother/father or grandfather/grandmother before them.  It took me a long while to work out that all the participants were actually closely related and shared a common grandfather.  There were two cliques in the court and when one side was giving evidence the other group could be heard muttering, “Ψέματα” – (lies) in low tones. 

The court policeman kept having to come over and tell each group to be quiet.  Emotions were obviously running high and as the hours dragged on the 4 magistrates were losing patience at all the time this case was taking.  They had fifty cases to get through that day and the way things were going this was not going to be possible.  The glories of the digital camera have reached Rhodes and so with almost every pronouncement the lawyers would produce yet another colour print out.  The actual incident had happened here. (A photograph of the house and yard was entered in as evidence to the bench).  And here is the balcony where she had shouted at him. (Another colour masterpiece was handed to the bench).  When the plaintive mentioned his poor demolished trees, before and after photographs of the aforementioned trees were duly presented.  At first it had seemed very systematic but as piles of colour photographs grew on the magistrates’ bench so did their anger.  Colour photographs of the dead chickens and the dog that had been killed were added to the rest.  As the pile grew, interspersed with 3 years of statements given to the police about previous encounters, the leading magistrate became incensed with rage.  At which unfortunate point the attorney for the prosecution decided to do a Perry Mason and started pointing out minor discrepancies, like, “You say it was at 4 o’clock but in your statement to the police on the 30th you said it was at 4.30 etc”, pausing for effect. He then approached the bench with the aforementioned offending statement carefully highlighted in yellow and presented it as evidence. 

This piece of paper was not even looked upon by the livid magistrate in the middle; she merely made a note of yet another piece of paper presented to the courts.  But Perry Mason was not daunted and launched into another point about the witness saying she was near the window.  The same report, another copy, this time highlighted in green, was presented to reinforce the validity of his point.  At which point the middle magistrate could restrain herself no longer and took the by now massive pile of documents, photos of houses/yards/chicken/dog/title deeds/statements and affidavits, threw them on the bench and started screaming at the lawyer, “I don’t care if it was 4 or 10, or on the balcony or beside the window – why are you wasting this court’s time?”  She screamed at the attorney, “We have been here two hours and have other cases. Get to your point.”  The attorney looked crestfallen and went back to his bench and put down his carefully green highlighted statement and acquiesced, putting it back among his pile of papers instead of on the bench. 

Then gaining steam again he seized another piece of paper and approached the bench, waving a document that proved without a shadow of a doubt that two of the main protagonist’s sons went to karate classes, and as such were quite capable of threatening his client.  This piece of paper, a clipping from the local newspaper about the local karate club, was duly submitted to the bench.  The middle magistrate’s mouth fell open and she gave the lawyer a look of pure hate before angrily minuting the 100th piece of evidence.  Poor Perry Mason. I could see he had simply no idea of how angry he was making all the magistrates.  Behind his back they rolled their eyes in despair and shook their heads at each other in disbelief.  The people in the back of the court were beginning to giggle now and then and the earlier shoulder shaking and smirks were much more blatant.  The court usher came over repeatedly and told everyone off in stern tones.  Then a new witness was called.  He was probably the most important, being somewhat impartial.  He was grandfather to both of the main parties and had actually witnessed the event on the 26th September.  So there was a sense of anticipation, as having both sides completely differing views of what had occurred, we all waited to hear what light he could shed upon the events.

An elderly village man with a shock of white hair, unshaven and dressed in farmers’ rough and worn apparel, was ushered into the court.  He was obviously confused as to where to stand and had to be lead to the witness stand in front of the bench by the prosecuting attorney.  The magistrate started to question him, but I was bitterly disappointed as his accent was so dreadfully strong I could not make out one word of what he said.  Worse still, with every question from the magistrate, he left the witness stand and kept going up to the bench to answer them.  Angrily the prosecutor kept leading him back to the stand and shouted, “stay there” as one would to a dog.  Even this had no effect, as with the next question he once again approached the questioner as you would probably be wont to do in the village when someone asked a question. 

His face red with anger, the lawyer hit on a brain wave.  He instructed the old man that in court you could not speak if you did not hold onto the podium on the witness stand.  Turning to the magistrates, the lawyer raised his hand, placating, as if to acknowledge the lie he had just said.  But it worked!  The old farmer grasped the podium with both hands as if it were the book of God itself and was obviously annoyed no one had told him such an important thing before.  I was furious at missing the most important witness of the case, when the muttering of the magistrates soon made things much clearer.  One magistrate confessed he could not make out the heavy dialect of the man and the two others admitted they had difficulty knowing what he was saying.  The attorney, now sweating heavily, approached the old man and, holding out both arms in a beseeching gesture, he asked this question in slow, loud, clear Greek, as one would to an idiot.

“What time did you go to your daughter’s house on the 26th September?

The answer was guttural, but slower than before, and yet did not answer the question asked.

“Everyday I visit her”.

This induced guffaws from around the court and the court official was out of breath racing around trying to quieten people.  The lawyer swallowed hard and persevered bravely.  He held one of his palms flat and with the other hand made an axe like slashing motion into his palm with each word, even slower and clearer than before.  Each karate chop to his hand was harder than the previous one.

“What time on the 26th September did you come to your daughter’s house?”

This time the answer was crystal clear and said as slowly as he had been spoken to, so everyone could hear.

“11 am in the morning”.

The relief in the court was tangible and the lawyer looked immensely pleased.  Not only had he solved the moving about problem but he had also established communication in difficult circumstances.  A real victory of sorts.  But before he could ask the next question, the elderly man reached inside his ancient jacket and starting hauling out boxes of medication that he was on and talking about his various ailments.  The people around me burst into fits of laughter and even the usher gave up in despair and sat down.  The lawyer was examining his star witness as if he was there just to torment him.  One magistrate lowered his forehead onto the bench in front of him, whether in despair or to hide his laughter I could not tell. 

The case had taken on a real pantomime performance as no one could get the old guy to stop.  Having at long last discovered the rules, holding the podium with one hand, he ran on like a clockwork toy gesturing at his relatives behind him with his other hand, and in sweeping gestures over all his medication.  Unfortunately his heavy accent had returned and all his mighty statements were unintelligible. The magistrates tried to stop him, as did the lawyer, but he was unstoppable and so they left him to run down and he did eventually.  Panting, he finished Forrest Gump style, but in Greek, with a clear, “And that is all I have to say about that.”  He went to step down from the witness box and the prosecuting attorney told him to stay as the defense lawyer had some questions to ask now. 

The prosecutor’s first question, about the incident of the trees (it had been his saw that had done the damage), so angered the old man he grasped the podium so hard it shook.  On and on he railed in anger, but about what no one was sure, as his heavy guttural accent had returned.  The lawyer seemed to have learnt from his previous experience and said he had no more questions.  This won him a smile from the middle magistrate in reward.  Not asking another question might have pleased her so much he might have just won the case! 

Unfortunately the old man had taken umbrage at the first question and really felt he had a lot more to say and would not step down.  Told by the magistrate to step down, he refused and shook his head stubbornly.  The prosecuting attorney approached him and whispered in his ear and pulled his arm quite roughly.  This actually pulled the old farmer off the stand but since he had by now worked out that it was the podium, not the stand that granted you freedom of speech in this court, he refused to let go of it.  So the podium tipped over slightly and the two of them scuffled, the lawyer sweating and red, and the old man hanging on to the podium and his right to speak by a death grip.  The prosecutor managed to prise his fingers off the podium, which returned to an upright position, although rocking alarmingly.  The farmer kept up a tirade of abuse - in which the Greek “F word” featured strongly - as he was ejected, and by now the audience in the court was in stitches and enjoying themselves immensely. 

This was turning into an unexpectedly good show and you almost felt their desire to have the old guy back, seeming to realize he was the star turn of the day.  The usher could not get the crowd to quieten down and the middle magistrate sensing things were out of control, called for a break.  I missed the end of the story, as I had to go home, but left enthralled by the majestic spectacle of it all. I wish I could tell you the result - who killed the chickens, who shot the dog, cut the trees and assaulted the man - but I have a sneaking suspicion that even by the end of the whole case most of these things would still be unresolved.  In the villages on this island, under the heavy accents, there are many mysteries and deeds done in the night that never get explained and perhaps even the best legal system in the world would be left sweating and red faced, but absolutely none the wiser.

Give Them What They Want

This giving business and my experiences of it.

 

Give Them What They Want

I see that people want different things

To the collector of delph pigs

With every shelf bending under totters hooves

The ideal gift is yet another fat sow

If your friend has scarves of every hue, design and material do not decide to bring her jewellery instead.

Another scrap of coloured cloth is closest to her heart.

So too, in expressing emotion

If your partner lavishes love

In small carefully chosen gifts then be sure to respond in kind

If they show it through tight hugs, loving kisses then return the favour

Should they demonstrate it with sweet cups of tea and foot massage

Then you know what they long for

Sometimes they listen with heart and soul

Encouraging you to really talk

Know that this soul awaits your silence for their turn

If in your weakest moment they are your strength and sure companion

Then watch for their faltering steps and be there for them

Do all this not like a foreign visitor needing to use the country’s currency

But resenting the strange money they must handle.  Nor like a street trader who barters the goods high above their value and swindles with the exchange.

But as you would if you found a stranger in the desert, thirsty unto death and you have a secret well that replenishes with every cup you proffer him, with abundant concern and love satisfying their urgent need.  Reassuring them of their future supply and with smiling delight in the fortune of having what they need above all else.

Jimmy

Everyone has a fragrance and some you remember long after they have passed away.  This story is for my Granda, whose humour and wit still makes me laugh when I bring it to mind.

Jimmy

Granda was always called Jimmy.  He had played the fiddle when young and was a renowned storyteller.  His stories always had a dig to them and when he laughed he would throw back his head and open his eyes wide, eyebrows making wild dancing movements.  We all loved to hear him laugh but his stories they were the best.  He could take a simple market day and turn it into the most thrilling story and yet when he’d finish the story you were never quite the same person that you were at the start.  He sort of gave you something of himself, a wisdom, an insight but in a funny quirky way not a long rambling story that elderly aunts were prone to.  He had a habit if you were sitting quiet beside him of slapping you really hard on the knee.  This would be followed by a bellow of laughter as he looked to see your reaction.  It was your surprise he loved and no one ever minded because he never allowed life to be wasted.  His jokes would chase away the boredom of life.  He treated everyone with care and yet with a prodding humour as if to check if you were all there. 

His descriptions of people and things were as quirky as he was.  ‘Shit house rats’ was one.  The pig house was haunted by these monster rats and Granda’s expression became a derogatory phrase for all kinds of people who, like the rats, made life difficult for others.  Granda would not hear of a word being said against his daughter and once when my Dad criticised her for something Granda looked at him banefully and growled ‘You’re in the wrong shop’.  No one ever took offence that I could see. Granda could somehow dance where angels feared to tread and get away with it.  Two elderly sisters who called to visit on the farm had just left, when someone asked how old they might be. Granda shook his head and muttered ‘Ah now, they are well hung’. (Traditionally birds were hung so that the meat could mature)

My father was a teacher and the farming life was an unknown world to him but I remember him pressing Granda to sell him a bit of land so that he could farm for himself.  Granda silenced him by saying ‘Ach now Bengy, if I gave you a spade you’d ask were the seat was’.  But it was his stories that live in my mind.  He told me a story about the B Specials and how one day his sergeant interrogated a women with himself and another officer.  She was tied to a chair and the sergeant hit her across the face repeatedly.  I was shocked when he told me and I remember asking him in a desperate voice ‘but you didn’t hit her, did you Granda?’  He replied in a very sad voice ‘No, but I didn’t stop them either’.  The fact that 50 years after the event he still felt bad about it drove the message home to me stronger than 50 years of Sunday School classes.  The reason he told me was to learn from his experience and his painful memories drove home his barbs of wisdom to depths the smug Sunday School teacher could never hope to pierce. 

Granda never went to church on principle.  His mother was left a widow with seven children at the turn of the century.  A proud woman, she was forced in desperate conditions to ask the local church fund for assistance.  They refused, and to rub salt in the wound shortly after bought, out of the same fund, a huge oil painting of the former minister.  She never stepped inside a church again and neither did her children, nor did most of her children’s children.  Granda’s spirituality came from a love of life not from dusty dead buildings containing sometimes even deader minds.  He treated people with honesty, humour and large margins of error.  One elderly aunt of mine remarried at 82.  Her new husband was a doorstep preacher always handing out his latest tracts.  He was 89 and they had their honeymoon in Dublin.  She said she had more love from him in 7 days than she had from her previous husband in 40 years!  Anyway when I was visiting them in Coleraine as a student this uncle objected to a sports blouse I was wearing and tried to button it up at the collar.  I resented not only his suggestion that what I was wearing was improper, but also his attempts to touch my clothes seemed to me much more improper.  I physically removed his hand and made clear my displeasure.  The visit continued and they both walked me out to the car.  As I said goodbye Uncle William refused to shake hands.  I was telling Granda about this later.  Uncle William was no blood relation to Granda and his behaviour was eccentric, surely Granda would agree.  When I finished my story he said, head lowered ‘You know what you should do?’  I answered ‘No’ waiting for some witty put-down for Uncle William that I could put to good use next time I saw him.  Granda said ‘the next time you see him, go and make him shake hands and don’t give up until you do’.  I was so shocked that he didn’t take my side; his words really clashed in my brain.  Then when I thought about it, that was just like Granda to call upon you to be better than you thought you could be.  As a result you never left his company diminished but always enticed to be something grander. 

As he got older he had cancer and rumours around the country village grew.  One day when he went into the butcher’s after a severe bout of illness, the butcher said ‘I heard a rumour Jimmy that you were dead’.  Granda replied ‘I heard it too but I didn’t believe it’.  He was exceptional to the end.  When he was rushed to hospital with severe pain I dashed to the ward to find him surrounded by those who loved him.  I couldn’t think of what to say, so I asked him ‘What he’d done to himself’.  He smiled and shook his head ‘I don’t know, I don’t know’.  I accused him of being like the old Eskimos deliberately walking out on the ice flow to die.  He chuckled and murmured ‘Well now, don’t you go following me out onto that ice’. 

His powers of description never abated.  One visitor to the hospital kept asking Granda how he felt.  At every visit it was the only question.  Granda silenced him by answering ‘Have you ever seen a rat pierced on the end of a pitchfork? That’s how I feel’.  Towards the end there were those vultures who kept urging him to see the light, get right with God.  Their urgency to save Granda drove those who really loved him to distraction.  God must squirm at what some twits do in his name.  Granda’s life was a constant calling out to God.  It was a silent one, but all the more genuine because of that silence.  His spirituality wasn’t a badge to show others; it was in how he treated others.  At the graveside the preacher prattled on about how he thought Jimmy had got right with God before the end.  The heavens opened at that moment and the rain bucketed down.  My brother leaned over and whispered in my ear ‘I think that’s Granda piddling on him from heaven’.  I laughed; held my face up to the sky and thought Jimmy would have enjoyed that one.