Category Archives: We may better understand who we are

Three little things.

Posted by Rose on

Three little things you may not know about me.

1• I use to believe that answers could be found in a bottom of a bottle.
Now I learnt/believe that not every question is answerable.

2• I’ve spent my life believing that I’m just not good enough, that I will never will be.
Now I can see that no one is perfect and that’s ok, that none perfect is actually perfect. That Perfection is in our little quirks.

3• I truly, wholeheartedly, believe that, we humans are all, one soul inhabiting two bodies and that you can only truly, fully be complete on finding the missing part of you!

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My angel standing by

Posted by Rose on

Angel Standing By. 💗

 

I gaze outside my window
And wish upon a star.
I open up my heart
And let my thoughts drift afar.
A tear rolls down my cheek
As I reminisce the past.
You hardly got to live.
Your life went by so fast.

And all because someone else
Made a dumb mistake.
I don’t understand why it was
Your life he had to take.

But now there’s no way I can bring you back
No matter how hard I try.
Because now you’re up in heaven
As my angel standing by.
(Karen Ashley Murray)

I’ve been thinking about grief a lot lately especially with the anniversary of my mum’s best friend yesterday.
He wasn’t just my mum’s life long best friend but he was a father figure to me.
As a young child I prayed that he was my dad. He treated me as I was his daughter and I worshiped the ground he walked on.
We had this special bond, a bond that only death could take away from us.
My mum had the same bond and even all these years later I can see her heart-break all over again as she remembers the extremely cruel way he died.
I have hardly ever spoken to anyone about the man who loved me as his own, who called me princess, who would have moved mountains for me.
I don’t think I even ever told Ross how much he warmed my life and how devastated I was when after months of suffering and pain he finally draw his last breath.
I had only ever seen one person die before, well I found the old gent dead on the toilet. 🚽
This though was a total different kettle of fish.
I loved him, in my eyes he was my father, the father I longed for, my friend and in ways my hero.

Twenty years on, I still grieve for him, I miss him desperately and I would cut off my right arm just to see his smile again, to hear his laugh and to try to understand his very dry sensed humour which I never fully understood as a child, now I roar as we reminisce his jokes.
What I would give to spend my summers in his swimming pool or to run over the sand dunes, desperately trying to beat him to the top.
For him to take me shopping for all the latest music 🎧.
I’ll never forget that huge tape shop he would take me to and I could pick what ever I fancied, it was a music crazy teenagers haven.
When summer would end and I had to fly home, with the most incredible sun tan from 6 weeks of pure relaxation and fun, I would beg my mum to marry him so everyday would be to me the perfect childhood.
When we walked through our front door, there would always be a parcel waiting for us, a box full of pirate vhs tapes. All the latest movies that were months away from being released. Jane and I would run to my room and snuggle up under the duvet and watch movie after movie, roaring with laughter ever time a head would pop up on the screen or a cough, sneeze or scream would over power the buzz of the muttered voices.
We didn’t care how bad quality they were, they were truly awful, all that mattered was they were a gift from my wannabe dad.

Grief and grieving doesn’t have a time line, you just can’t wake up and not feel the pain anymore, it never goes, somehow though you manage to keep living with the pain etched deeply into your heart, soul and memories.
I’ve now learnt how to look back and smile through the tears, I’ve learn to treasure the memories and for my wannabe dad to live on through them. I will never forget him, I will always be grateful to him for giving me my happiness childhood memories, for giving me a carefree summers, but most of all for giving me a glimmer of what father and daughters relationships can and should be like.
Sleep peacefully my angel standing by.

Magical, mystery tour

Posted by Rose on

I’ve always been the kind of girl who’s always needed to know the answers to the most impossible questions.
As a young child, teenager and into adulthood I would sit for hours by the old pier on Brighton beach staring out to sea, wondering who I was, where I’ve come from and every impossible question that I alone will never solve the mystery’s.
Years and years of not knowing my roots, my dna, but more importantly who my father was.
You see my mum fall head over heels in love with a traveller, who fall just as hard and just as deep.
A forbidden love, a love scorned upon by my grandfather.
They dreamt of running away together, they dreamt of a life filled with the unconditional love, the butterflies in their tummy’s, they dreamt of growing old, travel and the sunsets they would see, they dreamt of the beautiful life they had ahead of them.
They made love under the stars, and they held each other so tightly their soul become one and no one could come between them.
A love unbreakable.
Life had a different path laid out ahead of them as they were cruelly torn apart.
Breaking both their hearts, their dreams and their spirits.
Unknown to my father, they had made a tiny symbol of their love, a baby girl was growing.
Nine months later I was born and from as young as I can remember I needed to know who my father was.
A man I dreamt about, a man my mother could see in me, a man she loved through loving their creation made of the truest, deepest love.

As I day dreamed of my father, the hero I had wondered about all my life.
A man I knew I was part of, as he was part of me. A man who know nothing of my birth, my up bringing, my name, nor my longing.

We were lucky, we found each other, we adore each other and he really is the hero I had dreamt of. He is my father, my shoulder, my strength.

Over the last year or so, questions have been running rings around my thoughts, unknowns have been pulling me to find answers to his history, where he cane from, who his family were, where his roots came from?
The passion for knowledge and understanding pulled harder at my heart-strings and I started on a journey to discover his ancestry.

Little did I know that some questions, can never be answered!
You see I discovered that his grandfather was also born of love untold, love forbidden.
His grandfather was born at the workhouse, to a mother forbidden to love a man who gave her the gift of life.
Leaving behind unanswerable question of who he was, not only that but who we are.
Now I find myself looking to the star lit sky and wondering the most impossible questions.
Will I ever uncover who my roots belong to? Who gave my great-grandmother the gift of birth, the gift of love?

We may better understand who we are.

Posted by Rose on

“If we know where we came from,
we may better know where to go.
If we know who we came from,
we may better understand
who we are.”

It’s a journey that I’ve been making for many a year now.
My family’s history fascinates me.
Who where the people who gave us life?
Who where the couples whose love grow the seed of the future generations?
What are their stories?
What were their struggles and their joys?
Do I hold any similarities?
Do I have the same passion, the same will, the same beliefs?
Do I carry their strength, their determination, their spirit?
Who are they?

This is a journey, a quest even, that I have traveled since I was a wee 18 young girl, who needed answers to the most impossible questions.

It’s a journey, I’ve cherished, I’ve pulled deep into my heart.
An unthinking bond with spirits of our past.
I unconditionally love these people who gave me a change to live, who fought wars, battles, the slums, the blitz, the potato famine, the workhouse, the hardships, to give us the future, to give us life.
Those people are my heroes.

I’ve shared many a journey with my ancestors, I’ve discovered family shames, secrets, heartbreak and joys.
I’ve traveled their timelines, feeling every emotion with them.

There are a few family’s that pull on my heartstrings more than others, a connection so strong I’m baffled by its pull. The need to unearth every possible part of their history.
Some have been harder than others, some proving impossible to uncover but they have this hold over me, they have me hooked, line and sinker, I need to find out every tiny little detail about them.
What they looked like, what their personalities were, where they lived, how they died and where they were laid to rest.

One family whom has this hold, are my great, great grandparents on my mum’s, mum line.
They lived a life on the stage, singing, dancing and doing comedy. Yes I have a good few comedians in my family. How awesome is that. I now know who I got my dry, crude sense of humour from.

My great, great-grandmother had three children, two boys and a girl.
Two were born in a workhouse, the other was born actually in wedlock.


I can only imagine the shame that would have been brought down on her, I’ve lived that with you great, great Granny.
Why hadn’t she married the man who she loved?
Was it really a case that her father wouldn’t let her marry her sweetheart?
I sincerely believe that to be the case.
She married a few days after her father had past away.
She finally was able to love and cherish the man she loved. She got her happy ever after.
They had hard battles along the way, true heartbreak.
Her little girl died at the age of three.

This heartbreaking, devastation wasn’t known to the family until I pulled up the 1911 census.
The 1911 census is very different to the others, it’s the first to be completed by their own hand, it has much more information listed and there in black in white was her story of heartbreak, a heartbreak only those who have felt it, will truly understand. 😭


I could not leave it there, I needed to know her name and what had happened to this poor little tot.
And that’s where her journey entwined with mine.
I spent hours searching records, putting the pieces together and I found a birth that could possibly be hers, also a death that if I was right, would uncover her tragic story. A story that pulls so deeply at my heartstrings.
I ordered these two certificates not really knowing if I had discovered the right documents, it was a long shot, one worth taking. Thankfully I did and I now know her name, her birth date, her residences and the reason why she was cruelly taken from this world, leaving a hole in her parents hearts only fit for loving her.
I couldn’t leave it there, I needed to know where she was at peace.

That began a new journey in trying to find her resting place and you know what, I found it, I found this sleeping beauty’s place of rest.
She is buried at Islington cemetery, in a grave with 14 other people. How very sad that is.


Now at least, I can lay flowers on her grave, and she will know that she isn’t forgotten, she’s remembered and loved.

My dear aunty Eleanor, you will live on in my heart and you will always be remembered.
Sleep peacefully aunty El.
In our hearts you will remain, until the day we all meet again.