Share The Sorrow

Each arriving from our own corners of Europe, we gather with Mama around Papa's bedside (See post Share The Moment). From England, there is Sis and her eighteen-year-old daughter, Zara and from Finland there is myself. I have already been in Tenerife four days, Sis has just arrived the previous day after been told that Papa does not have much time left. Zara is now living on the Island with Mama, taking a gap year and immersing herself in her Canarian Island roots. Forty years after Sis and I departed our Island for new lands (see post Share The Moon), Zara has made the journey in the reverse direction. Papa would have been happy. 

It's late October, and outside the hospital room the Autumn sun has already climbed high into a cloudless blue sky, shining gloriously with almost shameless impunity on this saddest of days. Not far away from us, families from their own corners of Europe are sunning themselves on the Island's many beaches, frolicking in the warm Atlantic waters and creating joyful holiday memories. For them the visit to our Island is a moment of carefree existence. For the four women gathered around this hospital bed on a sunny Saturday morning, it is a moment of pain as we Share The Sorrow. Papa is dying.

His breathing is heavy and it pains us to see him in this way. We gather around taking it in turns to hold his hand and whisper in his ear that we are here, that we have returned and that we love him. Gently, Papa awakens and with a flicker of recognition acknowledges our presence, hungrily drinking us in one by one with those mahogany coloured Andalusian eyes that penetrate to the very core of your soul, creating with no spoken words a thousand tender images. His girls have returned to say their last farewell. He is at peace. The nurse asks us to momentarily leave the room whilst she and her colleague carry out their morning duties. We do as we are bid and wait outside in the long corridor until eventually, we return back to Papa's bedside.

Papa is now wearing clean nightclothes and has a calm and serene appearance that we have not seen before. His breathing is no longer laboured, now it is like watching a child peacefully at sleep. He then draws one last shallow breath, closes his eyes and in the flicker of an instant, in the space of an infinitesimal micro-second, is gone. Realisation and along with it immense pain fills us and we clutch one other and begin to weep: It feels incomprehensible that he was here with us just one second ago, but now is gone for eternity. The nurse arrives and tells us that it was a beautiful end. Exactly one hour and twenty minutes have elapsed since our arrival by his bedside. He waited for his loved ones to gather before taking his leave. She sees this so often, and I can see her own eyes welling up as she shares this small comfort with us.

And with Papa's passing I bear witness within the same year to yet another monumental farewell: farewell to a parent, farewell to the end of a twenty-five-year marriage and along with it half a lifetime, and farewell to a family home embedded within its muted walls a million silent memories and a thousand shattered dreams. But the farewell that hurts most is you, Papa. You have gone over to The Other Side, to a better place where old age, illness and pain can no longer ravage your body. But I know that one day we will meet again, and when we do neither of us will feel pain nor sorrow: You will be my young and strong Papa and I will be once more your little girl, sitting on your lap in the caravan at the chicken farm as we recite the new English words of the day in our terrible Spanish accents (see post Watching The English Part I And II). But now is not that time. I am now a Mama myself and still have much to do. Your soul has flown away but your body is still here and we still have one last journey to share together. But before that final journey we have The Wake. 

To be continued.....

Next post 13th January, 2019 : Gathering And Remembering

Note: All written content is the intellectual property of this Author. Image material is drawn largely from Pixabay with some small additions from private family archives.

Share The Moment

It is the present moment, and now a Mama myself, I return to my Island. But one important person is missing. In time, we will revisit the little Spanish girl in new and distant lands, but for now it is today.

The Boeing 737 slowly approaches the runway, sleekly gliding itself onto the tarmac with an almost imperceptible bump. We have reached our destination. The flight from Helsinki to Tenerife has taken almost six hours, and the little Spanish girl who climbed onto a plane back in the 1970's taking her to distant lands with emerald-colored fields has returned home (see post Share The Moon). That distant land was called England and it gave her a new life and a new name (see post A Girl Named Marie), but back on the Island she is once again Mari-Carmen, the same little girl who scoured the skies for storks, eagerly anticipating the delivery of a new baby sister. Over forty years separate that journey from today. Forty years that have discarded along the way eight US Presidents, beginning with Richard Nixon and ending with Barack Obama. Yet it feels like yesterday. But time stops for no one, not even for a little Spanish girl with two names.

Mama meets us at the airport as she often does. Now in her seventies and once again living in Tenerife, she is still as energetic as the young Mama I remembered back in her twenties in the caravan and on the chicken farm (see post Watching The English Part I). Her older brother, Uncle Fernando also in his seventies is with her, and together the four of us embark on the drive to our village on the Southern tip of the island. With me on this journey is my twenty-one-year-old daughter, Sofia. The scenery around us is one of serene beauty and we contemplate our surroundings with gratitude. Gratitude that we are once again in the cradle of our family roots. The sea and sky are both of a magnetic blue and with no clear boundary separating them. Heaven and earth blend together seamlessly in this tiny corner of paradise. After the cold Finnish winter that we have left behind us, the balmy air soothes our skin like warm honey. Mama and I can once again Share The Moon from the same window (see post Share The Moon), and joining us will be the next generation of Sanz women.

We pass by the sprawling Playa de las Américas, 'Beach of the Americas' tourist resort, its origins as a clandestine departure point for undocumented passengers stowing away on furtive boats to South America largely forgotten by locals, and completely unknown to the colossal mass of visitors that populate its hotels year after year. And once again I am that little girl, running up and down an empty swimming pool in this yet-to-be-born resort, revelling in the luxury of untainted childhood innocence (see post Share The Moon).

It feels therapeutic being back on my beach and closing the circle with my own child. The sun shines high in the sky, and the waves crash powerfully onto the black sand just as they did when I was a four-year old enjoying a family picnic with Mama, Papa and my many Sanz cousins (see post Share The Moon). Now I am here with my own daughter. The sands of time have trickled away, and with it have slowly vanished the buds of youth and innocence, but for my beach time has stood still and it feels like I have never been away. I wish I could meet with Papa and Share The Moment with him. I would tell him that I am well, that his grand-daughter, Sofia is with me on the beach on this day and at this moment, that her older brother Hugo is back home in Finland writing his thesis for the final part of his Masters  Degree and planning his forthcoming wedding to Julia, that they are both immensely proud of their Spanish heritage. But I cannot say any of this, because Papa is no longer with us.

That strong man who once comforted me on his lap when I was tormented at school for being different, for coming from my Island (see post B Is For Bullied), is now looking down upon his family from above. His pioneering years were spent living among the English, but the pull of home was too strong to resist and he spent the twilight years back home on Our Island. One complete year separates our final farewell, yet on this beach yesterday, today and tomorrow all fuse together into one timeless entity with neither beginning nor end, and in my mind, I am drawn back to that last goodbye.

To be continued......

Next post 30th December:  Share The Sorrow


Note: All written content is the intellectual property of this Author. Image material is drawn largely from Pixabay with some small additions from private family archives.

B Is For Bullied

Mrs Jones has just given me a new English name and I am bursting with happiness (see post A Girl Named Marie), but all this excitement is forgotten after the playtime break that soon follows. My class mate, Richard is not at school today and I miss him in the playground; now I don't have anybody to play kiss chase with (see post This Lion Can Talk), and some of the girls and boys from my class notice that I am standing alone. Before I realize what is happening, they have circled me and start to call me names. I do not understand what they are saying but I know it’s not nice. They are laughing at my brown skin, at my long black wavy hair, and at my earrings. I already noticed back on my first day at school that I was the only girl in the class wearing earrings, and now they are taunting me about it. 

I want to tell them that back on my Island (see post Share The Moon), all new-born baby girls have their ears pierced so that when the Mama shows off her new baby to the other Mamas in the village, you only need look at the baby's ears to see if it is a boy or girl. Otherwise, each time a Mama left home she would be saying a thousand times a day, 'It's a girl!' or 'It's a boy!' to every single person she met, and she would be exhausted before she even got to the end of the lane! When everyone knows that a baby girl has earrings and a baby boy doesn't, the Mama can save her energy to talk with the other Mamas about more important things, such as what they will be cooking for la cena, supper that evening. Mama proudly tells me that my ears were pierced when I was just three days old: Grandma Filomena, Abuela, passes a threaded, sterilised needle through each of my tiny, soft ear lobes as I obliviously nurse at Mama's breast. She then creates two small thread hoops on each of my ears which become my first set of earrings. After a while when my ears have healed, the cotton hoops are replaced by golden studs. From the tender age of three days I have never been without earrings. Just as my long black hair, they form an inseparable part of my identity and who I am.

I know that even if I could form the words to share all this with the boys and girls surrounding me, they would not be interested because they are not from my Island and would not understand. Now they start to laugh at the short sleeves on the jumper that I have already started to outgrow and I do not know why they do this. If I knew a girl who had clothes that did not fit her, I would ask Mama if she could give her some of my clothes to wear just as Jane’s Papa did for me (see post Watching The English Part III). I am suddenly ashamed of my brown skin, of my long and dark wavy hair, of my earrings and of my clothes that no longer fit. I want to look like everyone else in my school but I know that I cannot because I am from my Island and they are from here. Once again I jump onto my magic carpet and fly away, and the taunts of the girls and boys do not hurt me because my body is here but my soul is elsewhere (see post Watching The English Part III). After playtime, I walk back to class, take off my earrings and put them away in my pocket. Many years will pass before I wear them again.

After school when we are back in the caravan the happiness of my new name is forgotten and I share with Mama and Papa what happened at playtime. The tears begin to flow in abundance, and amidst my sobs Papa scoops me up with his giant hands and sits me on his lap. He lifts my chin with his hand so that I am looking straight into his big brown eyes and resolutely tells me, ‘Don’t ever let anyone think that they are better than you. Never, ever be ashamed of your roots. Spanish blood flows in your veins, be proud of who you are.’ And I think to myself, it’s easy for Papa to say these things when he’s not circled by abusive chickens on ‘The Tea Break’ (see post Watching The English Part I And II),  all taunting him because his skin is too dark, or because the sleeves of his overalls are too short, or because he cannot pronounce the words, 'wom-aaan', 'vehiii-cle’or 'pe-ooople' correctly. What do chickens know about being Spanish or English? Nothing at all! All they care about is their next feed. ‘Lucky Papa,’ I think to myself. I look at his big brown eyes and realise that I have the same brown eyes and I am ashamed of many things but I will never be ashamed of my eyes because they are from Papa. After a while my sadness subsides and Papa’s wise words make me feel better. 

We are on the chicken farm for what seems like an eternity but in reality a little over one year has elapsed since our arrival in this new land, and on an ordinary day like any other Papa tells us we will all soon be leaving Banbury and the chicken farm. We will be moving to a new town near a big city called London and there Papa will work on pig farm. 'How can I have such a clever Papa?’ I think to myself, ‘From chickens to pigs! What will it come to next, horses?’  One day in late 1971 we pack all our belongings and move onto the next stage of our life in England. We move to a town called Brentwood and Richard, the English boy with the cobalt-blue eyes with whom I shared that magical first playground kiss (see postThis Lion Can Talk), disappears from my life and we never meet again.


To be continued...


Next post 16th December : Share The Moment


Note: All written content is the intellectual property of this Author. Image material is drawn largely from Pixabay with some small additions from private family archives.