Memories Can Be Painful
Memories of invasions and war.
.With all that is happening in the world at the moment — and in effect on our doorstep — I actually find it difficult to write, so I have been a bit quiet on Medium recently. I take my escape in my photography. While my eye is glued to the viewfinder of my camera, often tracking a bird or an insect, I am lost. I am in that moment. It’s a form of meditation.
However, the recent events, especially the war in Ukraine bring back bad memories. The stories that one sees every day of people becoming refugees brings back the day we lost everything. From one moment to the next.
You go to sleep in the knowledge that you have a home to go back to (we were — luckily — on holiday in a Western country when the Russians invaded my country), a family to go back to, friends, school, your toys, and all the familiar things that make life easier. When you wake up it is all gone, because, as in this case, the Russians have invaded your home. Your parents decide not to go back and voila! You are a refugee with nothing to your name but an old car filled with summer holiday things.
You see photos of tanks rolling in the street that you know so well. You don’t know what is happening to your family (no mobiles then). You see photos of people burning themselves in protest (Jan Palach) and you see youngsters in front of big Russian tanks.
And in many ways, we were very lucky. No cities were bombed, we were already in the West, and we had friends in the UK that helped, and my father got a job at the University of Chicago in 6 months. But that fear of impermanence stays with you throughout your whole life.
Current Invasion by the Russians
The Russians invading Ukraine. It’s a difficult situation emotionally in my home. My mother was born in what used to be Czechoslovakia, but her parents — well one was of purely Russian origin and the other Russian from Kiev, so Ukrainian — but then it was part of Russia. She is torn with this whole situation and at 95 years of age finds it all difficult to comprehend. For me, my father’s family has Jewish links, I grew up with the stories of Babi Yar and the atrocities committed by many countries under the Nazi regime — including very much by the Ukrainians (it helps that the current president is Jewish).
Memories are long, memories even those that are not ours but are passed on from our parents, affect how we feel. I am sure that many painful memories will live long from this current war (if we all survive it). But it seems we — as humanity — never learn from the memories and from history. May there one day be peace…all over.
