At the top of the farm the low sun illuminated the golds and bronzes of the long grasses. The sky was lilac and the wintery sun elongated our bodies in leggy shadows across the fields. It felt like a day for remembering.
I find Remembrance Day very moving. We all have our links to the armed services and I have mine: a personal photo album I hold up in my mind’s eye. Then there are those who are faceless to me but who are named on war memorials around the country. No doubt they will appear in someone else’s photo album. The war memorial in the village brings all this into sharp focus for me. There is little movement in this part of the world and families have occupied the same farms for generations. The surnames I read on the memorial also belong to many living people I know. Suddenly those names gain a face because the person named on the memorial must in some way be related to little Douglas at toddler group or so-and-so on the farm along the back lane. On Remembrance Day we all seem so connected, so fragile, so human, and so very lucky to have such brave forebears.
