AT REST
Inscribed
Inscribed
on a park bench in London’s Highbury Fields: Kathleen Hoy 1903-1994.
Much loved Mother. Well done. So very western and Protestant in its
reduction of familial love to the accomplishment of a task, a quantifiable
achievement modifying an abstract emotion. This is the industrial revolution
at its most basic. Mother, her job now ended, is given this tight little
send off, its curt periods cutting off any excess; the emotional equivalent
of a gold watch and hand shake. Good job. Good bye. Yet such terseness
is affecting; this inscription burned into the wood of a simple park bench,
one of many on the perimeter of the park, one bench out of many, one mother
out of a nation of, one assumes, much missed mums. It works.
Out for aOut for a run, I stop at the bench,
the marker of the end of my once-around morning sprint, resting a leg
on a low rung to stretch tight hamstrings. And think of my own mother.
One of the triumphs of this kind of sentimental gesture is that it causes
the viewer to reflect on his own life, his own mum, whether specifically
accurate or not. Like any good sentiment, it sweeps away the cluttering
“no” of doubt and allows for the more generous “yes”;
yes, my mother has indeed done a good job with us, her children. Had she
not, would this particular son be here, in London, on an extended holiday,
easing a middle-aging body into another day of discovery, distraction,
and occasional triumph? It was my parents, after all, who equipped me
with the skills, the building blocks of personality and position, which
led me here to this lovely place. And could it be their wonder at the
world, a paying attention to attention, that would cause me to notice
this small thing, this modest mention in a city of monuments? Well done.
But this wBut this well-being is mitigated
by another marker, on an adjoining bench:Damian
Farr 11.6.68 --4..5.94 WITH LOVE.
A man ten years my junior, yet dead. Died of what, this Damian? Why would
a young man in his mid twenties die in the early nineties? Could he have
died of the thing that I escaped, the virus I began running from, metaphorically,
in the early eighties; that virus delivered, as so much is, through the
act of love itself? There is no such reference on the marker, but it is
a marker of my own identity, my own life, that I make assumptions, wild
guesses that are not so wild, that I glean information from its very lack.
Stick to the facts. Damian died the same year as Kathleen, yet died a
young man, while she achieved the full span of old age. Did he too have
children to leave a marker for him? Doubtful. So this memorial is left
by whom, with what relation to the deceased? Would the same society which
instinctively approves of Kathleen’s long life and motherhood cast
the same beneficent eye on Damian? Who am I to assume they would not?
Why am I gathering evidence? This is not a crime, but an accumulation
of notices, announcements of demise, of disappearance, brief fanfares
to which I feel compelled to add notes. I am attempting to leave something
of my own in this place I am temporarily residing in, applying the standards
of my home, as a child in the motherland of empire, past tense. I have
come to one of my ancestral lands to stand musing in front of memorial
plaques about imaginary lives. And I have an agenda.
As do othAs do others; culture, even in memoriam,
does not rest. Many months later, having once again the privilege to return
to London, to Highbury Fields, to my morning run around the perimeter,
to this mother, I find Kathleen Hoy’s memorial itself marked. barks
An additional inscription, graffitied onto the parallel lines of her park
bench, barks: DEAN, CHARLENE, NEVILLE+COLLIN WOZ ERE 2000 AN ONWORDS!!!
My initial grief at such a defacement molds injury into irony; these are
the living, the young (I assume) asserting the sloppy ecstasy of their
lives, spewing onto whatever surface the proof they are indeed alive,
the brood of a no-longer imperial power who (I assume once again) know
none of Kathleen’s struggles, the context of her times, the meaning
implicit in “well done.” Or perhaps not. Perhaps they are
her grandchildren, or peers of her grandchildren, unable to fathom this
disappearance, this clipped emotion, and so must mark its occurrence;
as a dog, when lifting its leg after sniffing out the past presence of
another, both salutes and erases.
And what And what of Damian? He is, as of
yet, undisturbed. Would Dean, Charlene, Neville+Collin have left something
more specific to his memory? Did they purposely avoid him, choosing Kathleen
instead? For Damian, would they have reconsidered the brag of their “2000
An Onwords!!!” leaving out, at the very least, a few exclamations?
Yet perhaps their mark is not so different from my own written attempt;
we mark-up each other’s lives, and deaths, reconstituting them into
our own. And we live, as they declared, on words. I run on.
© Jeff McMahon 2002