Gosh, we have just watched the top twenty of Elvis Presley’s
songs. I was doing well, until the song Dixieland came on. Oh, my goodness. The
pain, the emotions the feelings just burst out. I was in America with some special
friends and we went to a wonderful place where some amazing men were singing
and one song they sang I had to beg my husband to try to take my mind off the
song, the tune, the words, the memories. I asked Hub to please please talk to
me and distract me from the absolute agony I was going through, that was seven
years ago, the same pain agony hurt burning feeling lump in my throat that I thought
was going to split my neck open all those years ago as I was a little girl.
Same feeling then as tonight. Same song, why?
My Darling Dad who I worshipped he was is, my hero. He was
working as a coalminer cutting the coal on his stomach with old fashioned
cutters when the pit caved in on him. He was for dead. It was during the night.
I was eleven. It was just before I went to my new boarding school far away from
home. The irony was, I went to boarding school when I was six, my Mum fought
for me to come home at nights and it took until I was ten before we got our
dream. The head master of my first boarding school was a mean man. Little did I
know was, I had only a year and a half before I would be sent away again to my
second school. So only eighteen months as a normalish child that could go to
school in the morning and home to my parents at night. Right through my life I couldn’t
seem to go long without sadness hitting me. This night I will never forget. I heard
my Mum and big brother talking in our living room I had to learn what was going
on, I sneaked out of bed stood on our freezing landing and listened to words I just
didn’t want to believe to be true. It turned out, the pit caved in on my Dad
they eventually got him out and he was rushed to hospital. They didn’t think my
Dad would survive.
Months later he was allowed to come home after so much rehab
but he was still in bed in our living room downstairs. He was too ill to climb
the stairs as for our bathroom was downstairs. We lived in a miner’s cottage
which was simple house two bedrooms upstairs, downstairs a sitting room,
kitchen and small bathroom. No front garden garage or drive and a back yard
with a coal bunker and high walls around it that had a gate which lead onto a back
lane, where the coal lorries would drive down leaving us our sacks of coal to
keep our fire burning. We had no central heating back then.
My beautiful Dad who worked all his life, since the age of
14, and later in life, seventeen hours every day six sometimes seven days a
week for me to get to Russia. The guilt I feel for the lives my parents lived,
will never leave me.
My Dad lay still ill in his bed. I never thought he would
walk again. My Dad was so sweet. Would do anything for anyone, even total
strangers. He never had a bad word to say about anyone. I never heard him curse
when I was a child. He took my hand. He still looked pitiful. I overheard him
talking that day to my Mum saying he was worried sick as now who would work to
get the money to take me to Russia for my eye treatment? As a child, I felt so
sad. So sad. I sat with my little hand in his and he started to sing that song,
Dixieland and the words broke my heart, oh God, the pain. I couldn’t cry in
front of my parents. I learned from a tiny girl not to show them my feelings.
When we came home from boarding school on a Friday, we even had to recite the
words to go home but come back Sunday, cheerful, not tearful. We had to chant
this in assembly every Friday. Almost like browbeating. Brainwashing us.
Since then, that song has brought back all of those
feelings. My Dad has been dead 19 years and the pain I feel now is the same
pain as I felt 38 years ago. It hasn’t got any better . So, that came on
tonight and my poor Husband asked if I wanted it turned off. I said no. Oh but
really one hour later, I still am so very much in such dreadful distress. Gosh,
if only I could turn back time and beg my parents not to have taken me to
Russia all those times, in fact the trauma I went through on my first visit
there as a six-year-old child, I wish I had never gone at all. Then my parents
would have had a better life. So, I would have been blind at a young age, I would
have coped. I would have coped better then losing my vision as I did many years
later as an adult who was in total denial that my vision would ever go. Better
than I did with a one-year old baby to care for because the shock of blindness
would have been long ago in my life. Like a play I guess. Actors who rehearse
for the big night. I had no time to rehearse. If I had not have gone to Russia,
my life would have been so different but most of all, my parents would have had
a life, because of my stupid vision, my parents existed. They never lived.
Elvis to me was the best singer ever to have lived. As a
young girl, I thought he was the best-looking man ever to have existed and I loved
his films but moreover, he had the ability to be able to sing a song from not
only his heart, but his soul. And as for his soul, he was subnormal to me. He
was as if from another world. I have never seen anyone who looks like him, even
the lookalikes, are nowhere near to what he looked like as a young man.
I have always been able to feel compassion and empathy for
others. From a tiny little girl. I always could read people. And Elvis’s eyes
told a very sad story. I felt so sad whenever I saw him on our TV. It was as if
my heart was his and his pain was given to me.
How can
songs leave someone in such a devastated state of mind? Memories, people say we
are what we are because of our past so to remove memories would leave a soulless
state, but surely why do we need to hurt? Because of pain, does that really
make us nicer people? Those who don’t have a problem in the world, those who go
through lives smoothly, I guess they are not as nice as those who have known
sadness and tragedy, but why punish people in such a way, and others seem to
get away with everything. I think I would rather be that hard-uncaring person
rather than to have to go through this every time I have a memory of something
from my past.
I’m rambling I guess. So back to a short Diary. sorry I have
not been around for ages, it’s been a strange week. I have had numb words. And,
lots of them. My head is all over the place. I have been really busy what I have
achieved is almost invisible though.
Here we are again, another weekend. A couple of nights ago,
we went out with our friends to the local pub quiz. It was great. I absolutely loved
it. Great company and wonderful punters. I actually had alcohol. Yep, peach
snaps with lemonade. Ha-ha. Two I will have you know. That is not like me, but
peach snaps tastes like pop/soda, doesn’t it, my Husband said that I was tipsy,
but I wasn’t I was just relaxed and happy, I think he said what he said because
of the questions I was answering at the quiz. Well, get this one, one of the questions
I must say, it was the easiest question of the night as they were so difficult,
was what group had the song yellow out in 2000? I knew the answer. Hub who
loves this group by the way, said no, not a chance. I said it was and my friend
luckily wrote the answer down and I was right. They are an English super group.
I just cannot believe it has been 17 years since this was out? The group?
Coldplay!
I love going to the quiz with our friends. I’m totally rubbish
at answering the questions. In fact, I think I answered five right. But Hub
with all of his degrees, about seven. Smile. Thank God, our two friends managed
the other fourteen between them to get us to 26, out of 40. But the team who
came first only got thirty, the questions were really difficult this week.
Our boy came home from a very early start to his place of
work. Him and Shamrock took our two dogs out for a walk for the second time
today they have been out. Firstly, with June our lovely lady who walks them and
then the kids. So, tonight they will sleep
Ok, off for now, I appreciate you all. Take care. X
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