Today is my paternal grandmother's 89th birthday.
After lunch we listen to wartime music. 'I'll Be With You In Apple Blossom Time' starts to play.
'This will make me weepy,' she says. 'This played at the dance where I first met K (my grandfather). He said to me, I will be with you in apple blossom time. It was the start of February, three weeks before my 21st birthday. I was going with another boy at the time, who had been missing in action for some time, but I knew then that even if he did come back I wouldn't have had him. I knew then that I wouldn't have anyone that wasn't K.'
My father was born a week before the end of WW2, and my grandparents were happily married for over 50 years.
I know there is a tendency to romanticise the Second World War, but sometimes I wish I could know things with such certainty.
aww this post made me weepy. every time i hear 'underneath the lamplight' i recall all the old tales my grandpa told me of friends who lost their one and only true love during the war. so sad and oh-so recent that it's almost hard to believe. x
ReplyDeleteOh how beautiful (the blossom and the memories)!
ReplyDeleteOh so beautiful... I am truly lumpy throated.
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