Memories that didn’t go six feet under.

The problem with memories is, that they are not always very well memorised. For some mysterious reason, the brain doesn’t quite work as a computer; oh no, it is far superior to the very thing I’m tapping these words out on. But there again, brains can be a bit of a mess. One never knows what memory is stored where and contrarily to a computer, where one can put things into neat little files when it comes to memories we frequently need a trigger, someone says something, or it’s a song, or it may be a smell, well not in my case of course, unless it is something very pleasant or particularly foul.

I work hard at remembering things from my past including the embarrassing ones which for some reason frequently seem to include a woman. I work even harder at not remembering what I don’t want to remember, the problem is, you can’t just stuff it into a file and then push the delete button… trash, out you go, don’t need that anymore. But no, it’s always bloody there, hidden somewhere deep, but there. You can be sure someone tells a story and suddenly something from your own past pops up, something that you thought was in the delete box only the delete button malfunctioned. And we're only talking here about our own memories… what about all the things our parents, uncles or auntie’s told us, all the beautiful stories, ah, if only we had written them down. But back then we were young and too busy being busy.

Now all those people are gone and we can’t ask them anymore, their wealth of information went down into their graves and is lost forever.

Well not quite maybe and this is where sometimes we need a trigger. I was having dinner with my wife on a terrace when an old, although in excellent shape so-called “Volkswagen Kübelwagen” drove by, basically the German equivalent of a WW II jeep.

Somewhere deep in the memory box of my brain, there is still a compartment with remnants of my mother’s war stories in occupied Holland; not that she was particularly forthcoming with her memories but from time to time she would flap out little gems like the night when an English bomber did his best to bomb the barracks taken over by the Germans and failed miserably.

My mother was one of the many who secretly worked for the resistance as many did in The Hague. When she heard the night bomber she knew where he was going, the only problem was, he missed it by about a mile.

‘I heard the engines of the plane coming in low over the houses and wondered, what’s he doing here? He’s in the wrong area. There’s nothing here. If it had been daylight we might have waved him on and pointed him in the right direction but with the blackout, it was pitch dark and then the bombs fell in rapid succession. The windows in my house and many others shattered and there was a big bomb crater in the middle of the road nearby, and that was it; he was gone. He hadn’t even come close to his target. There was a small consolation prize though. After a while we heard a siren as a German patrol car approached at full speed, probably to find out what exactly had happened and report the damage. Unfortunately for them, they too drove without lights for fear of being detected by a marauding plane, and to our great amusement, they never saw the bomb crater until they crashed into it and probably broke their bloody necks. In the end, we had the last laugh.

Fortunately, somewhere, and maybe not even all that deep, I still retained some of these gems and hopefully many more before they fade away forever.

For me, this is a great incentive to begin sharing a few of these stories before it all goes six feet under.

James Delahaye.