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a map of the Gower peninsula showing Swansea and Mumbles Head |
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town of Mumbles seen from Oystermouth Castle |
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The lighthouse of Mumbles Head |
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the stone window of the second floor chapel in Oystermouth Castle |
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I do some crazy things based on my brothers' suggestions |
I am having a wonderful time with my brothers who laugh and sing and break into poetry throughout the day. Any time we are serious it is to tell a story from our childhood. It is a very special time that probably doesn't come to many siblings when they are adults.
Mum at fifty |
After a lovely afternoon, the other little surprise was that because it was Sunday and most people go out for a big lunch, the only restaurant open within walking distance was a Turkish restaurant. It was, again, surprisingly good!
We have come to Swansea specifically to have a memorial service for our late mother. On Monday, our cousin, Dafydd, a minister, officiated at a touching service in cousin Mary's church. It was attended by about fifty people. Most of them were our cousins and family but one of my mother's sisters, Joan, was there. Some church members and others, who were distant relatives, had seen the announcement in the local paper and rounded out the numbers. My brothers and I were thrilled. Besides all the stories we heard, the unknown family members we met and the graciousness of the ladies who catered the tea afterwards, what will remain with me is the singing. Dafydd had us practice the two hymns he had included in the service and invited us to sing them in either Welsh or English. I didn't see how this could work but I was amazed as the fifty strong "welsh choir", that would be all us ordinary folks, raised our voices and produced a truly incredible sound.
The Jones family |
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these children are all in the family picture above |
the three of us at great grandmother, Rachel's, grave |
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Catherine reads poetry while William does the honours |
After we cleared away the plant growth we realized what a beautiful grave and marker our great-grandmother had, courtesy of her quite wealthy father. We read a few of Mum's favourite poems as we scattered her ashes on the grave of the Rachel who had died far too young.
After lunch we picked up Auntie Joan and made our way to our grandmother and grandfather's grave - our Mamgu and Dadcu, as they say in Wales. This required a little surreptitious sprinkling as the grave is in a well-kept and well-used cemetery. Again we read a poem but thankfully this time, the emotion of Mynedd Bach did not rise up and choke us.
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in front of our Mamgu and Dadcu's grave |
And then we went to the original Joe's Ice-Cream Parlour, to have a traditional ice cream: the nutty cone for Rob and Auntie Joan and Mary and the ice cream sandwich for William and me. Because this is how the Jones family celebrates special occasions --- we eat!
After we delivered our relatives back home it was time for our last and most important stop to say good-bye to Mum.
Before we did, we visited our childhood home: the house where I was born. The street looks much the same but the back gardens are very different. Gone is my grandfather's green-house with all those tomatoes strung high to the ceiling and smelling so wonderful.
51 Bryn Street: where I was born |
We thought we would visit my grandfather's pub The Dilwyn Arms and have a little drink before we drove down to the Mumbles. Although it looks just the same on the outside as it always did, it was a very depressing place and quite empty. We had a brief chat with the waitress but couldn't bare to remember beloved family members there.
We drove down the coast to Mumbles Head, just past the village of Mumbles where we were staying. Apparently, our mother was very good at elocution in her youth, winning cash prizes frequently in the various Eisteddfod festivals. As children, we were often treated to her poems but the one that was always our favourite was "The Women of Mumbles Head" - an epic tale of a ship that went down in a gale off the rocky promontory that is known as Mumbles Head. We wanted to honour her love of poetry and this poem in particular by leaving a little of Mum in the sea at Mumbles. It was a bit of a treacherous trip down the cliff as the waves crashed against the rocks and I let my two brothers make the final descent to the water's edge with our mother's ashes.
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Mumbles Head: a final resting place in the sea for our mother |
When they made their way back up to where I was sitting, we sat quietly for quite a while as the sun was making its steady way toward the horizon. There was nothing but the howling wind and the pounding waves and then Robert recited the poem one last time.
"Bring novelists your notebook
Bring dramatists your pen
And I'll tell you a simple story of what women did for men....."
And so we leave our roots, our birth home and the memories of many family stories told to us over the years by our beloved mother, Rachel Jones Turner.
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the Welsh flag flies atop Oystermouth castle |