Open Writing

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As cold waters to a thirsty soul,
so is good news from a far country.
Proverbs 25:25

In the dark days of World War Two, when I was struggling to grow up amid all the confusion of a dysfunctional family, war, propaganda, disruption, and dislocation, there were several things that never happened at the homes of ordinary working people. These were, that the doctor did not visit, neither did the minister, and neither did the telegraph boy. These were all callers that were commonplace at the homes of the rich and middle classes, but the poor were deprived of good health, spirituality, and timely information.

A doctor at the door of a poor person was a sure sign that something intimately connected with life or death was being acted out inside. Only the significant rites of passage, such as difficult entry into life and immanent departure therefrom, persuaded the poor that the expense of calling the doctor was worth while.

For all other conditions there were the old, futile folk remedies such as mustard plasters, camomile infusions, witch hazel, castor oil, Carter’s Little Liver Pills, Bile Beans, Zam-Buk, Fenning’s Fever Cure, various mediaeval procedures and potions that grandma swore by, that sounded either farcical or cruel, including a fish head in a sock tied around the neck, and a variety of proprietary medicines that disappeared when legislation was passed by Act of Parliament regulating the manufacture, dispensing, and claims made for products that pretended to have medicinal value.

Calls from the ministry were less rare since they did not always take an interest in who was born to the underprivileged, although they would more than likely be involved in the burial of the indigent dead. There are those alive today that do not believe that grinding poverty existed, but they are wrong. Poverty was a frequent visitor to the homes of the poor and in many cases was a permanent guest. Yet the poor have seldom attracted the interest of the clergy, and those days were not different.

Telegram boys rode bright red bicycles and visited ordinary working-folks’ homes only with bad news. The well off might use them for everyday correspondence, but the poor knew only too well that the shadow of the Telegram boy across the front door window meant that a loved one, husband, father, or son had either been killed in action, or else, and in many ways worse, was missing in action or missing presumed dead. Often not knowing the fate of a dear one was more devastating than knowing they were safely dead and had found peace at last.

After the telegram boy had called, sombre mourning clothes were donned, the curtains quickly drawn to darken the house, a signal to the neighbours that death had visited. The response from neighbours was unerring. They walked into the stricken house through the back door, filling the kettle and putting it on the gas ring for a pot of tea as they did so, before going into the front room or parlour, to sit and weep with the victim’s family, and then to mash the tea when the kettle boiled.

Some helped to sew black diamond-shaped patches on the sleeves of outer garments and coats, betokening mourning. Someone would hurry to the nearest funeral director’s to make arrangements for the interment.

The saddest sights I have witnessed are those where a stranger speaks at the funeral of someone I have known well. Funerals are nor fitting occasions for generalities, but that is exactly what happens. When my father was buried, the fact of his first marriage and René and myself was unknown, and not referred to. I can not say that I was distressed, but other might have been, and doubtless have been. Father was not a church-going man, so I suppose he had only himself to blame. Of course, had the minister been a visitor to his home, he would have known better, but he probably would not have been made welcome.

Friends and neighbours – being one meant being the other – were dispensers of medicine and spiritual comfort in the place of professional medics and clerics, who had other concerns to busy them, in addition to which they assumed the role of telegram boys as they shuffled around in slippered feet with woollen shawls significantly covering their heads and shoulders as they susurrated news of the tragedy to each door in the community.

The immediate response was a busy trail to the door of the afflicted, from all parts of the tight-knit neighbourhood, and the dispensing of comfort in misfortune, without the dubious benefit of unwanted advice. West Riding people have a disposition to dispense advice whether wanted or otherwise, but this superintendence was always put off in the face of disaster: consolation was all that was necessary and all that helped. Neighbours stayed with the family and attended to their needs until the healing was well under way.

It may be precisely because the poor have to be self-sufficient that they find easier passage through life especially in the face of disasters and death. A poor man who loses everything loses little than cannot be replaced, whereas a rich man loses, as he may suppose, the whole world when he loses everything. It may be to this difference in outlook that caused Jesus to say that it was hard for the rich to enter His Kingdom.

Strange to think that for the poor at least, it appears that life gets easier when you are dead, than ever it did when you were alive. That is because it was never easy being alive. Nevertheless, at least the poor have something to look forward to in a place where there is no need of doctors, of ministers, or of telegram boys.

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To read earlier chapters of Ronnie's autobiography please click on http://www.openwriting.com/archives/a_shout_from_the_attic/