As a kid I used to love the last week of October. During those autumnal half term holidays we would prepare for the biggest communal celebration outside of Christmas…Bonfire Night. It would mean going from shop to shop collecting cardboard boxes, trying to find any old wood and the occasional bald discarded car tyre and raiding dad’s wardrobe to find clothes for a ‘guy’.
For those too young to understand what I mean by ‘guy’ as kids we would get dad’s old trousers and shirts, maybe a jumper or jacket, tie up the openings in the legs and arms and fill the clothes with rolled up newspapers. We would somehow connect the pieces together, top it off with a head made from an old football and maybe crown him with a hat. That was our ‘guy’.
The guy had 2 purposes. The first was to use to raise funds to buy fireworks. That meant strategically placing our guy outside Uncle Bryn’s newsagents on Brynhyfryd Square and asking everyone who passed for ‘penny for the guy’. The second was to be the last addition to our bonfire prior to lighting on the 5th November.
We all knew the story behind our celebration. Every year in school we would be told the story once again, in the same way a month or so later we would hear the tale of the Nativity. As the saying went,
‘Please do remember the 5th of November gunpowder, treason and plot.’
Looking back, it’s a gruesome tale of attempted political mass murder with the main culprit, ‘Guy Fawkes’, being burnt at the stake after being hung drawn and quartered… but we didn’t let those details spoil the fun.
Around the same time we would have a small celebration called ‘Halloween’. It usually meant an evening spent trying to grab an apple from a bowl of water only using our teeth, although I do remember dressing up one Halloween in a cloak for a party at Boys Brigade when the Monday night meeting coincided with 31st Oct.
How things have changed. These days the shops are filled with all sorts of ghosties and ghoulies from early September. As the nights have drawn in more and more houses have been decorated with spiders webs and skeletons. This week a lot of schools have had Halloween discos and next week hoards of kids will wander the streets dressed as mummies, skeletons and zombies as they tramp the streets collecting chocolates, sweets and treats.
At the heart of both autumnal celebrations is a fascination with death. For centuries human beings in the Northern Hemisphere have marked the passing of summer and the start of winter. It’s a time when trees shed their leaves and the harvest is hopefully home. The earth is starting to ‘die’ and although we now have a pretty firm hope and belief that spring will return next year our ancestors couldn’t be quite so sure. To try to tip the balance in their favour they initiated lots of ceremonies, many of which included bonfires, in the hope of persuading whatever deity they believed in to give them protection through the dark days ahead.
It is against this backdrop that I’ve been thinking about a subject that we don’t really talk about…death! There is an old saying that there are 2 things in life that are certainties, death and taxes. It seems that we spent a lot of our time trying to avoid both, but this time of year does bring the realities of life into sharp focus.
Last night I hosted the Mayor of Neath Port Talbot’s Annual Remembrance Concert at St David’s Church in Neath. It’s always a great night with Pipe and Brass Bands, and uniforms, and great stories of courage and community work.
After some great music and singing we get to the heart of the evening, and that beautifully sad moment as the poppies fall. In the silence we have a chance to remember those who have made the ultimate sacrifice to secure our freedom. For a moment we are confronted with losing people we have loved.
But it hasn’t just been the Remembrance services that has got me thinking. For the past few weeks I have been working with a charity called Ataloss. The charity was founded by Rev Yvonne Tulloch. She was a cannon at Coventry Cathedral when she heard the news that her husband had died whilst abroad on a business trip at the age of only 45.
That moment turned her world upside down, not only emotionally but also financially and spiritually. As she told me, for years she had conducted funeral services and comforted those grieving but when she found herself in the same situation she felt lost and alone.
It was a friend that convinced her to go on a ‘Bereavement Course’ which so impacted her life that she decided she would do everything in her power to make sure everyone in the UK would have access to the same resources.
This year Ataloss celebrates its 10th Anniversary with a Service of Celebration at St Paul’s Cathedral in the company of the charity’s only patron the Archbishop of Canterbury. Yvonne had heard a song of mine ‘Still With Me’ and asked if the charity could make the song available for churches up and down the country in their All Souls Day services or year round at funerals.
In all of the dressing up we seem to have forgotten that Halloween is a shortening of ‘All Hallow’s Eve’. Not to miss a trick, or treat, the early church realised the significance of autumnal celebrations and decided to create Hallowmas where the church honours the saints and martyrs who have gone before. Again death is right at the heart of the celebration.
It seems we will do everything to mark this time of year but not actually talk about the central issue that one day we will be gone.
Yvonne Tulloch thinks that part of our aversion to confronting death goes back to the 2 great wars of the last century. Before that we had traditions like dressing in black, drawing all the curtains in a house, presenting the body of a lost loved one in the parlour and going through recognised periods of mourning. Death was real and close to home and people knew how to act.
It’s thought that during that time so many people died that we were persuaded to ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’. In a way grieving might have appeared selfish and over time we forget how to do it.
Yvonne thinks that grief is a natural response to loss and we now know as a society that it’s absolutely crucial that people grieve and to find constructive ways forward.
On Sunday a programme I have made about grief bereavement and the work of Ataloss will be broadcast as part of the All Things Considered series on BBC Radio Wales at 9am.
Then next Friday I will be singing ‘Still With Me’ at St Paul’s Cathedral to a backing track I recorded with Mumbles A Cappella at St Peter’s Newton, taking a little piece of home to the centre of the City of London.
If you are suffering at this time of year there are people and organisations that are there ready and willing to help. Going to the Ataloss website might be a good place to start your Bereavement Journey www.ataloss.org.