The photograph of my mother.
Ross Thompson-Cooley.
The photo was the key to unlocking her memory: Sitting on my bed and looking up at the black shiny shelf. I saw the picture that I had so often taken for granted. The frame had once been a light silver colour, but over the years, the finish had faded. The oval centre showed a black and white family scene, my late mother and sadly also my late sister were standing next the mini clubman parked on the road outside of our home in Afton Road in Freshwater on Isle of Wight.
My mother was standing in the background next to the car in her smart looking coat and sporting her long dark hair and my sister, almost blonde and dressed in what was probably a blue jacket and a pair of jeans stood bravely facing the camera some way in front of her.
The glass in the frame is cracked, three jagged lines across the centre, much like the way life damaged the later year’ s. The road is empty, and the trees are protecting the rest of the scene. My sister has a has a bewildered, happy smile which was to be so cruelly taken from her in her late twenties by cancer, but not before she had given birth to a baby girl, who became the figure of so much division and controversy.
My mother’s expression is sombre, almost serious. As if she were asking just how long I would survive, before some adventure killed me at a young age. She had already heard about my cliff climbing exploits as well swimming out into Freshwater Bay and exploring the caves used by early smugglers. Only later did I realise the stress that this had I caused her. My early career choice mut have been not such a surprise as the final straw on the camel’s back. It was the same expression that became silent and sad when I answered one of her questions in such an off handed way.
She had watched proudly as I had passed off the square, mid-way through my basic training. Making her so proud. And now I was home for the weekend, she wanted to know my posting’s. The young boy who took that picture, had no concept of danger or harm or a mother’s natural worry and he boldly stated that he was going first to ‘Munster in West Germany and then to Derry.’
I was taken aback by the strong silence on that face that I saw in the photograph. The face that turned away and walked with the rest of her into the kitchen. She failed to sob quietly. Trying to mask the sound by rinsing my combat trousers in the sink. And looking at that face in the photograph, I felt the shame of my last word at the end of that sentence. It was way that she had gazed upon me during the taking of that picture that had bought to mind a chance conversion.
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