Gosh, I can't tell you how many times I have started writing and then decided that what I had to say sounded rubbish (even to me), anyway living down here in the South of England we have been bombarded by the centenary of the sinking of the Titanic and more importantly her launch from Southampton, and taking a drive to Southampton yesterday with the kids and parking at the now obsolete Maritime museum (as they have moved the exhibition to another site for the centenary). We noticed a huge passenger liner and it looks like a block of flats on the water enormous and awe inspiring but not pretty not at all, but big is what we have come to expect, big and luxurious and isn't that the true legacy of the Titanic.
Kieran asked me the other day why, why was there all this hullabaloo over a boat that sank 100 years ago and the I told him the usual stories, the orchestra playing all the while, the acts of bravery by the stewards and staff, the thousands of passengers found frozen in the icy water. As I related these facts to him I had tears running down my face and as I told him about the orchestra, so did he.
It was amazing to me that my 8 year old son had so much empathy that he cried at possibly the most heroic and legendary of Titanic stories.
On the news people were being interviewed, mostly those with a family connection and since most of the staff were local to Southampton, so many lives were affected by the loss. He asked if we knew anyone and well not personally but my dad's sister Mavis was married to a wonderful man affectionately known as Ginger, aka Felix Fagan and his father apparently was on the Titanic and thanks to being a 1st Class passenger survived.
I have however been thinking and I think there is a song lyric "History repeats itself trying to succeed", and really the only way we can stop these tragedies from happening is to keep them fresh in our minds, it's also why we need to have 18 hours a day on the TV of the atrocities of Nazi Germany and Hitler. The world can never be allowed to forget these past events, because if we do, we allow them to happen again and again. What would the world have been like had Nazi Germany prevailed? Well I probably would not be here.
Anyone with a hint of Jewish blood or a black, brown or yellow skin, would be non-existent, put into death camps and killed or worse - survive. Yet here again my mind is puzzled because are we not programmed to survive? I have studied amazing stories of survivors of the death camps and the power of the mind is so undisputed that some where able to withstand enormous amounts of pain and suffering by simply shutting down their brains, mentally removing themselves from the physical world and overcoming the physical pain of the body, this is something I think I will write about later.
So a toast to all those souls whose voyage to The New World landed them at the Pearly Gates.
In love and light
Tracey
