To Bladon

My mother was holding my little hand firmly in hers, lest I become detached from her in the jostling assemblage. I had no idea why we were there, just standing at the roadside with so many others, waiting.

"Stop fidgeting" my mother said, as I swung around her legs on the cantilever of her arm, "they're coming now". And come they did. Rank upon rank of soldiers passing in perfect, mechanical time and then the horse-drawn carriage. All filed past us in silence except for the rhythmic slap of the military boots and the clopping of the horses hooves. I had stopped fidgeting.

Only in later years did I learn that my mother had taken me with her to pay her respects as the funeral procession of Winston Churchill passed solemnly though the streets of London on its way to Westminster. I was 3 years old.

Nearly 50 years after that day, I held my mother's hand firmly in mine as I guided her patiently and slowly along the path that runs along the side of St. Martin's church in the village of Bladon, Oxfordshire. In the grounds of the churchyard we came to a stop at the side of the simple, granite sarcophogus that marks Churchill's final resting place.

My mother was, by then, shrunken, brittle and arthritic and the first cruel, green tendrils of demenetia had begun to curl themselves forebodingly around her mind. I steadied her as she leaned forward to touch the gravestone. She closed her eyes and whispered something under her breath that she did not want me to hear.

When she had finished, I helped her to straighten up again and we stood there together for a while longer in silence, except for the birdsong.