Till Us Do Not Part

I’ll tell it the way that it was. No simplification or glorifications– just as it was.
As so often I was living in the partial guilt of a mistake I’d made. In itself not a terrible one. My brother Gerald laughed. Mum would have been very annoyed . I had broken a few cardinal rules. I’d have got her rebuking glance. A partial smile, saying ‘ you ninny’ , a glimpse of anger, a tinge of regret, a hint that she expected more , was really expecting no more, but hoped for ever more.
The Poles are masters of saying nothing and imparting everything. My father was of Russian descent. Born of a nation destined to talk. To talk for ever. My Russian dad spoke. My Polish Mum imposed. You can ignore Dad, Mum lives on forever. Selective attention let me escape Dad’s harangues and discourses. I didn’t miss much. Dad never changed his mind or attitudes. If asked I could have readily given the impression I was listening. Like being in the rain with a good raincoat. With Mum it was like being in a river. With luck you could keep your head above water. Only on swimming in the direction of the current.
But what had I done? Well the day before my little brother Laurence, in his terminally fastidious manner informed that the Rabbi and burial society wanted Mum’s wedding contract. We wanted Mum and Dad are buried alongside each other. To have similar head stones. But first he wanted to see the marriage contract.
On hearing this I went ballistic. I angered at the Rabbi and the burial society. I’ve inherited Dad’s long windedness. Yorkshire’s sensitivity to exploitation and manipulation are also of me. So the letter was terse, sarcastic and bitingly bitter. I demanded to know why? I enquired after the sanity of the Rabbi and burial society. I briefly but thoroughly delved into the morality of all in sundry. I wondered if they unhappy with the document would they dig one of our parents up?
In fact the letter was many things. Of one thing it most definitely was not. It was not my intentions that the recipients of my ire were to be the recipients of the diatribe. In this wonderful era of technology we are envelope free. There are no free meals. The bad taste left by licking stamps and envelopes has gone. On hitting the reply button to my brother unfortunately the Rabbi and burial society were blessed with my opinion of them. Thus replacing one bad taste with another.
I had broken the ‘golden rules’. Never make anyone feel ashamed or embarrassed. Behave like a gentleman. You kill more flies with honey than vinegar. The last aphorism was Dad’s favourite. It would appear anywhere and everywhere. So even if out of place here it would have been trundled out.
Mum and Dad would have been united. The ‘clot’ had done it again. The failed experiment that was their first born had run his predestined course of lunacy. They would have been delighted with their third attempt at perfection, my little brother Laurence’s somehow elegantly managing to diplomatically put some kind of gloss on the issue with a beautiful excuse.
So we ended the day united as one. Three brothers. My lunacies respected, Gerald’s humour loved and Laurence’s diligence and good sense loved and respected.
But fate did not let it pass at that…
I am a liberated Jew. I’ve been liberated from all the gibberish clap trap that observance demands. I don’t need it. God has something to say, then I’m here. I don’t ‘need’ an intermediary. Judaism is not a franchise. God is not McDonalds. So the years mourning after Mum’s death is not for me. I go my own way. That way, that evening was to a wedding .
Dressed to the teeth, one of my friends said I look like a funeral director. So I was overdressed. But I was there. At the beginning of the evening we have the ritual ceremony. The Rabbi did his bit. The groom did his bit. The bride did her bit. And God did his bit. He addressed me. Not directly but I was given a very stark message.
The Rabbi is our village Rabbi. Like most I cannot decide if I like him, if I admire him or even if I support him in his unending war of the Jews that involves his day to day existence. But I heard his ceremony patter before. But being fore warned was no to be fore armed.
The Rabbi told the young couple to keep their wedding contract and he blessed them with the prayer that they can forget it’s existence and just abide by its contents. The same wedding contract that had elicited my diatribe.
In my native Yorkshire the weather is not that of my native Israel. Squalls unexpectedly appear and drench you. Warmth is replace by an all pervading sense of misery. I was back in Yorkshire, sad and unhappy. I was in an Israel where I was observing a year of mourning. But more so much more….
In my minds eye I was at the wedding of the young couple that were my parents. I saw a composite that was my dear Mother as she went down the aisle. There she was on the arm of the one man she adored. Her father, the man from whom she adopted all his philosophies and attitudes. She made them her own. Pride, loyalty to the family, love of justice were her and then our DNA. But two things were overlooked. Dada was a fun loving man. He was impish and irreverent. Mum could only manage wryness and the occasional giggle. The other was Dada had let Mum down. When Mum’s mother had died when she was fourteen she had been cast aside. Subtly, probably less than she felt but it was there. Hidden under the carpet. Hidden from all except those who knew and they were bequeathed never to acknowledge. That was why the man she loved was leading her down the aisle to a man she would never love. Her husband and our Dad was to be respected, loyal to, obeyed and erstwhile , but only erstwhile, loved. Mum would never be let down again. One big unexpected disappointment traded in for one perpetual small aching disappointment. All under the carpet, but never to be acknowledged. In later years the couple would oppose any of their children if they wished to marry for love. A ‘tradition’ that I unwittingly maintained. But I digress. I saw me and Mum as a boy. How close we were. I bore the brunt of her angers and she was my perpetual confident. How I’d circle the kitchen table being debriefed after school. I simply loved my Mother. I knew she was unhappy. I used to have a fantasy. That I was her father and I could ‘fix’ her sadness. I became a shrink and as a surrogate I failed too. I married a wife who would never love me and, like Mum, never admit it. Imitation is the most sincere of compliments. Even inadvertent imitation. Mum had fears of death. Again never to be admitted to. She admitted to nightmares about the dead. They were there all her life. Only as she approached death did they cease. I felt that if I stayed young she would never age. Death would never take her. Even now I feel her still here. I still look to see what the weather is like in Leeds. Mum liked good weather.
This collage of memories and sensations all around the vows. Even in death they appertain. The vows are of all. Death does not us part.
I entered the wedding as a irreligious celebrator. I left the wedding as a chastened mourner.
I left alone.
I drove home alone.
I left with Mum.
I drove home with Mum.
She’s reading this with you.
I miss you Mum. It takes more than a year. It takes forever