A Visit to my Father’s Grave

The yellow haze hung in the air like an impending disaster. Above the haze even larger volumes of stormy clouds swirled around tenaciously. Slowly at first the drizzle came down, the kind they call Scotch mist. It saturates the clothing in a very short time and leaves you standing there freezing to the bone. From the edges of the undergrowth rose a cold damp mist that enshrouds and clings to everything. Visibility was at a minimum, making one feel like they were trapped inside a bottle or a drain like a drowned rat.

Slowly out of the murky depths emerged a figure, a small slight woman, holding the hand of a child. Hunched over against the cold and wet breeze she peered looking for something. Gradually, slowly, like ghostly apparitions, headstones emerged from the mist. Still my mother and I moved on seeking now we can presume, a particular grave. ~ I was four years old.

That is all I can remember about that visit other than eventually we arrived at a headstone. Then we just stood there in the cold misty rain, and my mother added a warming tear or two. That was the only visit I ever made to what I found out years later, was my fathers grave. Came the war, evacuation and I just forgot the road back.

All of this I have to say, has been brought about pure and simply because Julie contacted me, about tracing my families ancestry for her daughter.

One wonders in this exciting adventure, about the long and winding road.

To you Julie, I am forever indebted for this trip.

C’ya