RIP Terence David Edwards 6/10/39 - 9/01/26
Country Singer, beloved husband of, father of...et al.
This happening has pushed my 'stop' button.
Sometime in 2019, due to dementia Terry (I always called my father that) forgot who I was. He was absent so much of my life I can't latch onto anything that showed he ever really knew.
People said we had a voice in common. They're saying it again now. Eirwen, my mother, always clarified, 'Sadly, Iestyn, you inherited your voice from Terry's side of the family, not from mine. I had my vocal cords officially looked at, and, apparently, they were pure operatic. Terry's were more for the folk clubs and the country and western.'
It's a lottery, singing. It all comes down to the little flaps of skin slung across your windpipe. Eirwen's flaps were Fortnum and Mason, Terry's flaps were Poundland.
But still he had a residency at The Nashville, West Kensington compering bills that included Slim Whitman and George Hamilton iv; he regularly performed at the Wembley Country Festival; and Decca Records featured him in their "Country Greats" series.
Friends (and others) are telling me what to expect from grief, all from the perspective of their own experience of mourning. I'm not judging here.
I'm to take each day as it comes, reach out, go within, trust the process, give myself time/care/permission (nobody says what for?) and feel able to cry and not worry that it might be considered 'unmanly'. As I've spent a lot of my time since 1983 in a tutu, terrible make-up and what a former First Sea Lord called 'unconscionable knickers', rigging a cabaret conceit to get a random bloke onstage to give me the kiss of life, I think any potential 'manly' ship has not so much sailed as been fully scuppered.
I draw back from imagining myself any further along in time than the now. Which I ought to welcome, perhaps.
I hanker to escape somewhere exotic - ooh, fancy - or at the very least somewhere the WiFi won't connect automatically.
But also don't feel I can cancel forthcoming public speaking gigs in Upminster, Hockley and Welwyn Garden City.
I wonder if, in their Elogies, my Norfolk stepfamily will surprise my Welsh blood relatives with Terry's retelling of himself. He was not taken away from his neglectful mother, put in a workhouse and later adopted by his grandmother Evans, leaving her home to join the RAF and fly spitfires in the war. Nor was Gran Evans (none of us ever knew her first name) prone to wearing hessian smocks while bringing him up on the Rhymney farm with horses, pigs and goats. She wore chintz frocks and stout-control pants and lived in the middle of a Bargoed terrace with her glass eye, Toby jugs and pug, Mitzi.
And - see top - Terry was born in 1939.
He was so happy with my step-mother, Maureen, who died two years ago. She allowed him in his lackadaisical way to tend to her. Whereas Eirwen had always been in warry mode over his untidiness (she would accost strangers and ask them about their use of Vim) his addictions to bad food and good bitter, also his unfaithfulness. And aggression. I try not to dwell on a memory of Eirwen staggering to the bathroom, clutching at Terry, blinking away soap suds popping like sores, congealed gravy on her left shoulder like an Etsy food-themed brooch. He had punched her full in the face, dragged her to the sink, shoved her head in and held it down among the crockery soaking after our Christmas Dinner.
Eirwen had cooked lamb, sending me to ask Welsh Lil for some fresh mint. ‘And don’t forget to wish her Merry Christmas, Iestyn. She’s not got family.’
I don't think I should speak at the funeral.
I picture Terry in his late twenties, dressed as a cowboy, playing guitar and singing beautifully, "Mockin' Bird Hill".
Got a three-cornered plow and an acre to till
And a mule that I bought for a ten-dollar bill
There's a tumble-down shack and a rusty old mill
But it's my Home Sweet Home up on Mockingbird Hill
Nos da, Terry.
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