We had arrived up North late, the night before in late November. A five and a half hour coach journey, not dissimilar to the ones I took from Fredericton to Halifax. Halifax, that’s where I was again, but this time, Halifax, UK. My partner, a Northerner, (from Leeds) felt strongly that I, a Haligonian, should visit this Halifax. At the time, it was our first weekend away as a couple, and my partner, the eternal explorer, was keen to show me his neck of the woods. Although we woke up in Halifax, it was actually Hebden Bridge he was keen to show me. A small town, recently gentrified, once the home of old mills, like it was in his childhood. We stepped off the train to this sleepy place, a stark contrast to the boisterous match day atmosphere on the train carriage we had just left. I was led over the rushing river on a stone bridge, the rising sun creating long shadows as we strolled into town in search of breakfast.
Although we had reached Hebden Bridge, there was still further to travel. I followed my partner’s confident lead, catching a tiny, local bus that slowly trudged up a steep hill, higher and higher, until it truly felt we were on top of the world. Heptonstall (another H-named place). My partner guided me along a stone path, to a small church and cemetery. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you, but England is full of churchyards and cemeteries. Everywhere. Before me stood two buildings, almost replicas of one another. Except, one a functioning church, stood in opposition to the other, a skeletal frame of a building that used to be a church. Ruins. Again, another common fixture here in the U.K. However, I stood transfixed. Old, old, old gravestones stood, leaned and laid before me. The still early morning sun beginning to warm these worn stones.
I was led to a further, additional cemetery, a newer one, ones I was more familiar with, but certainly not as prettier as its older, separated section. We wandered all the way to a stone with a familiar name. Syliva Plath Hughes, with the Hughes heavily scratched off, with what looked like hundreds of pens stuck into her grave, like explorational flags, fans of her work, pilgrimaging to their fallen god. This grave was the reason my partner brought me here. He assumed that as an English teacher, I knew a lot about her, that I was invested in her storyline. Truth be told, at the time I knew little of Sylvia Plath (other than the Bell Jar) and nothing about why the Hughes part of her name was so controversial.
I am and have always been drawn to cemeteries- but only old ones. Which may seem odd as I am deeply, deeply terrified and preoccupied by death. Newer cemeteries seem so sterile, the recent indentations, the dirt, the pain, all so fresh. They make death feel too close, which I of course in my lived experience know is true and imminent. Old ones, strangely, feel much more removed, the graves worn, nature that has reclaimed what people forgot was always theirs. The families that mourned them, themselves gone and buried. Far away enough to give perspective. In these old places I feel able to observe death as a foreign spectator.
We stood overlooking the Hebden Bridge Valley, where as if on cue, it began to snow. The bright sun flecked glittering flakes, slowly accumulating into a glistening blanket resting delicately against these heavy stones. I was struck with both the ethereal and heaviness of life on that winter morning.
A few years later my partner and I went to Manchester for a summer holiday. His parents had grown up there and wanted to show us their old stomping grounds. I could listen endlessly about the places people speak about that are/were important to them. Their old corner store, where they used to catch a bus, the location of their first kiss, where they learned how to ride a bike, you get the idea. I loved hearing and seeing the places that were important to them, carried over to us, who would look at these places differently, to carry the memories of locations and their importance. Our earthly connections to places, people and things. To say to others that this place matters, but I understand after me, it may not matter to anyone else and maybe sharing it with you makes it matter a little longer.
It was during this trip that my partner wanted to go to various locations outside of the city to take photographs of buildings. Which if you know my partner is of no surprise. He loves photography. He loves buildings. Normally, I don’t mind being a travel companion on these photographic and architectural excursions, but as we were back North, I had only one place on my mind.
“How far is Heptonstall?” I asked him.
In the years since we visited the first time, I thought often about returning. Was this place as precious as I romanticised it in my memory? I know a lot of people would want to leave a memory as they remember it for fear of ruining it. For me, revisiting places is an important form of self trust. Are places actually that beautiful, or are they beautiful because of the feelings and people I associate with them? How the places changed? How have I changed? How do these intersect?
I was thrilled to take this trek back to Heptonstall on my own. However, this day could not have been in greater contrast to its former. I took an afternoon train, deserted and empty. The warm summer rain pounding heavily against the window. I eventually stepped off onto Hebden Bridge, learning that I could actually take the tiny bus directly from the station. The unrelenting rain challenged this same tiny bus chugging up the same steep hill, onto this tiny secret of a place.
Slung around my shoulder was the Nikon camera my partner had bought for me. His endless belief in my artistic endeavours even though my commitment level to the hobby is sporadic at best. His ongoing faith that every time I go out, I should bring my camera- just in case, in fact, most of the time, he kindly slung my camera around his shoulder waiting on the rare occasion I did want it, he would have it at the ready to any passing whims of wanting to capture moments other than just in my own mind.
Sylvia Plath had drawn me more immediately this time. Into the sadder, newer, removed part of the cemetery. The controversial name Hughes on her headstone had been recut and polished, people’s rebellion wiped away for the time being. How often did this happen? I stood looking at her tidied up headstone. Since the last visit I had feverishly researched the lives and relationship of both Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. I bought Ted Hughes’ poetry book ‘Birthday Letters’, an anthology of incredibly personal and devastating poems he wrote over a thirty year period, to process the tragic suicide of a very young Plath. One that was only published after his own death as an aged man many, many years after Plath’s death. Plath was an American who died in England. Why was Plath here and Hughes wasn’t? Why were his ashes scattered in some remote location in Dartmoor? It was Hughes who was from Heptonstall. Hughes had decided on this location to bury Plath because he remembered this as the last place the two of them were truly happy together before they had separated. For all of their controversy, and feelings people have regarding his treatment of her while alive, I was struck by this sentiment. It made me sad to think of her alone here and sad that the question of where to bury her was an unthinkable burden of his to make. As I wandered back over to the older section, I couldn’t help but reflect on my own awayness like that of Plath’s. Of being a Canadian likely to die in England (hopefully later rather than sooner). Where would I end up? Who would know I was here?
I suppose when I imagine being buried (as morbid as this seems), I always imagined being buried behind the cemetery of the house I grew up in. I spoke of this cemetery in a previous post The Nature of Things. Similar to Heptonstall, a small cemetery that is also tucked away. There is no outside sign noting the cemetery. I only know it because I was shown. This place I visited on a sometimes, monthly, weekly or daily basis in the 18 years I had lived on Prospect Road. I had not seen this sacred place in person in over 20 years. That secret place that (still) feels strangely mine. Last summer, while visiting Halifax, Canada, I asked my childhood best friend if we could stop by there on our way back from Peggy’s Cove. This place I had visited, and revisited over the years in my mind. It felt strange to share this private moment with him, his two dogs and my partner. We parked over by the now abandoned church, two houses down from my childhood home. I remembered vividly the October afternoon of 20 years ago standing inside, the only time I had ever been inside this building that had been so nearby, attending the funeral of a dear friend’s mother, with the same childhood friend beside me as if we were both still 18 year olds. The light hitting the same angle I remember it did through the orangey/yellow stained glass window, stood in the back of the congregation, the organ music guiding us. As if time had not passed, the house between the church and my childhood home was still owned by the same (even were then) elderly couple that occupied it during my childhood. They had stayed the same, older, but the same.
However, I soon learned that the path had very, very much not. I felt a deep sense of shock as the once clear and gravelled path had now completely disappeared, the moss and grass had reclaimed it, fallen trees created repeated barriers, re-testing my commitment to seeing this place of remembrance. We clambered over each hurdle, like some strange video game we had to conquer with the addition of deep wood Canadian insect infestation as an additional deterrent. When we had finally arrived, further surprisingly, the cemetery, which used to be more enclosed and private, was now wide open, with the long, scorched remains of August grass. This was not as I had remembered it. Perhaps I should have come in Autumn? Where the forest surrounding might have been kinder to my memory? It would have allowed me the space to have taken the time to explore as opposed to being made to feel forced out by the feasting insects, relieved to see anything new come along this long forgotten path, eventually I was saddened to be so relieved to be out of it. This place that had once been so sacred, a place I often imagined spending eternity, was now both logistically but also emotionally out of the question. I was also relieved that I had gone back, that at least I knew it was different now.
A different kind of relief met me that previous summer day when I revisited Heptonstall. Relieved that the once glimmering image of snow that first day was now replaced with the shimmering image of rain on that second day. The same stones, vertical, horizontal, slanted, continued to reflect at different angles, like shards of an enormous mirror shattered over the old church yard, which I hadn’t really noticed that first day. The meditative sound of the rain showers rapping repeatedly against the deeply lush green leaves, soon to be met with the comforting sound of organ practice, proclaiming proudly from the small church. I was immensely grateful for the camera my partner insisted I bring that day- just in case. It occurred to me with each attempt to capture light I was also capturing memories, with all of their fleeting impermanence. It was this that made them precious.