My parents died in December 2014, 8 months before their 60th Wedding Anniversary. It would also have been the year Dad turned 80, and I reached my half century… We’d talked about going to the opera in Verona, something they’d sometimes talked of doing, to mark the occasion. They would fly into Verona and I would drive to meet them there, either from England or Umbria. At first, when Dad became ill, he said he was now far too old for such a trip. However, as the weeks went by, he said that if he was better we would all do exactly that, to celebrate his recovery. Looking back, perhaps he knew he wasn’t going to recover, but at the time it felt positive and “back to normal”, to be looking ahead and planning holidays.
Dad was romantic – he wrote my Mother a poem for their 50th Wedding Anniversary – and although not a rich man, he would certainly have bought my her a diamond, I’m certain of that. Instead, in honour of their diamond wedding anniversary, I was going to buy myself a small diamond necklace, but with the move to France, that seemed very extravagant and frivolous, so instead I bought myself a large diamond shaped prism, because prisms have always fascinated me, and I’d never had one before. For quite a while, I didn’t have chance to look at it, let along hang it somewhere suitable and it waited heavy and pointless, wrapped in paper in a corner of a bookcase. Then, on 20th August 2016 I was finally in a position to unwrap it, and I hung on the large glass wall at one side of my studio. At first I thought the “invisible” nylon thread would break, but it has not yet done so, and the diamond hangs, twisting gently, and casting beautiful rainbows of colour across the room. They fall on my ironing board, my cutting table, and across my lap when I’m sitting in my Dad’s armchair; it is so very comforting and I feel they are there with me, delighting in my room, laughing with me at how I managed to change a garden shed (my first “classroom”) into a studio in France.
Today it is 20th August again, and it would have been their 62nd Wedding Anniversary. They were – they always will be – my diamonds, casting light on my life, turning fresh air into rainbows and making me smile.
I loved you 50 years ago, I love you more today.
So, please stay beside me, Darling, For ever and a day.
My Dad, 20/8/05