Béla Bartók

I’ve been thinking about the need to clear out the loft. Partly because I want to find things to sell on eBay, partly because we may move sometime in the next year or two and partly because I always begin to feel the need to clear out in the winter (like the spring for most people).

I brought a bag and box full of old letters and photographs downstairs to sort out. I found letters I wrote to Ads when I was 16 and 17, letters my Dad wrote to his aunt Elsie when he was a little boy and a letter my Uncle John wrote to me from the psychiatric ward of Warwick hospital a month after my Mum and Dad separated- in 1997.

Uncle John was pretty special. He had all kinds of mental health challenges, and I really didn’t know him that well. I’ve only written about him once on this blog.

Uncle John wrote the letter that I found on light blue lined paper with a blue felt tip pen that was running out by the third page. He told me he was sad that Mum and Dad were splitting up but the most important thing was that I (and my sisters) should not worry about it. He underlined that. He also told me he would send me some Béla Bartók records in the post as soon as he was out of hospital, and quoted a scripture that he thought would help me.

After a long time apart I saw Uncle John again in 2004, just after Billy was born. We spent small bursts of time together and we would write letters to each other occasionally. His were always on the same blue paper. He never did send me the Bartók records.