Mothering Sunday and the Responsibility & Joy of Remembrance.

Harry Leslie Smith correctly predicted that without a return to socialist politics- fascism and wealth inequality would destroy not just our society but civilisation itself. 2025 has become a year of endings rather than beginnings for Western Society. We are wandering in the valley of authoritarians, and it is unlikely we will find our way safely out anytime soon.

For the last year, I have been refining and editing The Green And Pleasant Land to meet my dad’s wishes. It is his history and journey towards socialism as well as finding fulfilment in being loved and loving in return. Beta copies of The Green and Pleasant Land are almost ready, for anyone who wants one. Send me a DM, and I will put you on the list.

Once my rent is sorted for Tuesday, I will begin to upload the final sections of the Green and Pleasant Land.

However, it's Mothering Sunday, which my Mum hasn't enjoyed for 26 years. The last one I celebrated with her, in 1999, we were fighting, and because she was 70, I thought there was time for us both to make amends. But that was not so.

My dad always made a big to-do over anything that could be used to celebrate my mother. Mothering Sunday, her birthday, their anniversary or any day of the week was excuse enough for him to thank her for giving his life meaning. As I have written in other essays, my parent's marriage was very fulfilling for both. But my mother was short-changed in her destiny because of it. I don't know if- given the chance at the end of her life, my Mum would have altered the trajectory of her fate. I know she thought about the other life she could have had. I think many women from her generation did think of other possibilities denied them because of their sex and social class.

However, my mother's premature end, followed by my brother Peter's death at 50, was the impetus to create the Harry's Last Stand Project. Below is an essay from 2012 from my father's reflection on his wife and Mothering Sunday.

I have also included a tip jar for those able to assist me in continuing the Harry’s Last Stand project.

A month after the death of my wife, I found in a drawer of her writing desk a stack of Mother’s Day cards tied together with a string. They were buried under sheaves of ancient letters and mementoes of a well-lived life.

The cards on the top were handmade and constructed out of crate paper. They were made when our kids were young because the sides of the cards were uneven, indicating the makers were unfamiliar with scissors or straight lines. Each card greeted me with a yellow sun drawn with a thick crayon nub. Its rays shone down onto a pencil-sketched stick figure, tagged underneath as “Mum.”

Inside, a greeting of "I love you, Mummy" was printed in a bold and primitive style below a big misshaped heart.

When I got to the middle of the pile, the Mother’s Day cards were no longer handmade but store-bought. The front of the cards displayed polished photographed shots of fresh-cut flowers and bold fonts proclaiming “For You Mother.”

The interiors were as shiny as their exterior, and treacle verse slithered down to the bottom of the embossed paper as if it was maple syrup dripping into a bucket. The cards looked like they were bought hastily on a lunch break or just before the commute home from work. Their autographs at the bottom of each mass-produced salutation flashed love and a taken-for-granted belief that life never ends. At the bottom of the stack were Mother’s Day cards from the year of her death. By then, our children were grown and had lives of their own. But each card displayed a love as simple and as direct as the proclamations they made to her in their boyhood.

On the day my wife died and before the funeral director came to collect her remains, our children placed onto her still body one of their handmade Mother’s Day cards from boyhood. Our children did not want their Mum to feel alone and abandoned while she journeyed to the crematorium. My wife's final resting place is amongst the atoms and debris of the expanding cosmos, but with her in that dust is some of the love her children showed her in life.

It’s a bit of an SOS with days left before rent day. About 4 new subscribers will put it over the line or $210 Cad.

Your support keeps me housed and allows me to preserve the legacy of Harry Leslie Smith. Your subscriptions are crucial to my personal survival because like so many others who struggle to keep afloat, my survival is a precarious daily undertaking. The fight to keep going was made worse- thanks to getting cancer along with lung disease and other comorbidities which makes life more difficult to combat in these cost-of-living crisis times. I promise the content is good, relevant and thoughtful. But if you can’t it is all good too because we are in the same boat. Take Care, John