Here we are, well into April already, the poetry month. In a nod to T.S. Eliot, St. Louis poet, buried in familial Somerset, I spell the word “cruellest” his way.
In 2010, we read T.S. Eliot in the garden at Hays, Brent Knoll, in Somerset. My father, Brian, and his two brothers and sister were reunited for a couple of glorious June days after Brian’s April death sentence of mesothelioma. It was like something out of a dream – perfect weather and cherished family gathered together in an idyllic English garden, reading poetry.
The elder generation of Barrys were all born in the 1920s, and we cousins called them collectively “The Twenties”.
Brian, the youngest son, was the first to die, later that year, then his brother, Mike, followed by Celia, the baby, my godmother and aunt. The eldest son, Uncle Pete, has been the last of that generation for several years now. In early April, we received word that Pete is now gone, too. All The Twenties have left us, and life is diminished without them… But what luck to have known then for as long as we did!
Celia was, herself, a poet. The three boys all served in World War II, and all survived into the twenty first century. Mike was the first man to land on “A Bridge Too Far”, at Arnhem, and was wounded and taken prisoner by the Germans. Brian was an officer on the ship that fired the first shot in the Normandy Invasion on D-Day. And Pete, a Royal Navy Commander, never discussed his service – my father always said he was a spy. Pete was very private, in life, as in death. No service or celebration of life, except in the hearts of we who know him.
Rest in peace, Twenties. As Eliot said “every poem an epitaph”.