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Recovery |
Recovery
I tried to rescue people
but I realised it could be dangerous just digging, not knowing what you
were doing and I was getting in the way of people
so I immediately switched over to pastoral work … The end of
chapter 8 of Romans is a great summary of faith - What can separate
us from the
love of God - It’s a passage I always use when there’s
a personal tragedy or disaster and that’s a message we always
try to emphasise - I am certain that nothing can separate us from the
love
of God, neither death nor life, neither angels or other heavenly rulers
or powers, neither the present nor the future.
Bereaved Baptist minister, speaking in 1996
My work afterwards
was more like that of a pastor. People had to face not only grief but
bitterness, anger and even guilt. The first real
thing that
happened were the terrible nightmares people suffered, reliving the
event time and time again. That went on for months. There was a terrible
worry
and pressure on people while the tip was still there, and every time
there was a row over what was to be done about the tip my surgery would
be full
the next day. The stress and anxiety triggered off by what to do would
affect people’s health.
It was predicted at the time that a lot of people might suffer from
heart attacks brought on by the stress and grief, but that didn’t
happen. Other experts predicted
that there would be a number of suicides, but that didn’t happen
either. These people hadn’t allowed for the resilience of the
families involved. It was psychological problems that hit worst.
One thing that did happen within a short time afterwards was that the
birth rate went up. Also many people were drinking a lot more and for
some time
after I had to deal with people who had serious drink problems, and
for people who already had health problems, those problems increased.
From the time of the disaster for about the following six years I dealt
with people who suffered break downs. There was no set pattern or any
time when it could be expected to happen. It happened at different
times for
different people.
After the disaster I warned the community would have to come to accept
its guilt. This guilt came out in many ways. There were the so-called
guilty men who were blamed for what happened; they suffered themselves
and were
the victims of a hate campaign. But it wasn’t only them. Women who
had sent their children who hadn’t want to go to school that day
suffered terrible feelings of guilt. … Grief and guilt came in many
different ways. There was a strange bitterness between families who lost
children and those who hadn’t; people just could not help it.
Aberfan doctor
I kept asking myself why I hadn’t died and I blamed myself for
allowing my brother and sister to die.
Pupil, Pantglas Junior School
I’ve got to
say this again, if the papers and the press and the television were to
leave us alone in the very beginning I think we could
have settled
down a lot quicker than what we did.
Bereaved father
… we were a community that were not used to being exposed on television
or in papers. We are a community that wears our hearts on our sleeves.
We’re
quite open and we were only doing in the time after the disaster, as far
as I’m concerned, what we’ve always done for years, thrashing
out and the press exploded it. The other thing I always felt was
that many of the facts that they reported were, and if they kept
the facts,
were
fairly accurate. But it did remind of a scientist who has got a theory
and then forces the facts to prove it. But what I wanted them to
do was to take the facts and then decide what it told them. And the
result was
that they were coming in, and I remember more than one interviewing
me wanting me to give certain answers,
Bereaved father
We weren’t prepared for it. We weren’t geared up for what was
happening. Like the people from the press. They came in. We hadn’t
seen any of this, ever, we din’t know, it’s a different world
to us. And they came from all over the place … They were round with
their notebooks and their pads and asking all these questions, ‘How
are you getting over it?’ You can’t ask me that now,
never mind 30 years ago.
Bereaved parent, speaking in 1996
Fragments of the school itself still lie embedded in the rubbish – chunks
of green-painted classroom wall…. Even more poignant relics lie in
a corner of the buried playground piled haphazardly against a wall – some
miniature desks and chairs, evocative as a dead child’s clothes,
infant-sized, still showing the shape of their bodies. Among the
rubble there also lie crumpled song-books, sodden and smeared with
slime, the
words of some bed-time song still visible on the pages surrounded
by drawings of sleeping elves.
Across the road from
the school, and facing up the mountain, stands a row of abandoned houses.
This must once have been a trim little
working-class terrace, staidly Victorian but specially Welsh, with
lace-curtained
windows,
potted plants in the hall, and a piano in every parlour – until
the wave of slag broke against it, smashed the doors and windows,
and squeezed
through the rooms like toothpaste.
Something has been done to clear them, but not very much. They
stand like broken and blackened teeth. Doors sag, windows gape,
revealing
the devastation
within – a crushed piano, some half-smothered furniture. You can
step in from the street and walk round the forsaken rooms which still emit
an aura of suffocation and panic – floors scattered with
letters, coat-hangers on the stairs, a jar of pickles on the kitchen
table. The
sense of catastrophe and desertion, resembling the choked ruins
of Pompeii, hangs in the air like volcanic dust.
....Prettily dressed and beribboned, riding expensive pedal-cars
and bicycles, they [surviving children] are an elite, the aristocrats
of
survival, their
lives nervously guarded and also coveted by those who mourn. By
luck, chance, and by no choice of their own, they are part of the
unhealed
scar-tissue
of Aberfan.
Laurie Lee, writer, on Aberfan one year on
Of course, we could
have lost the boy too. He was on his way up Moy Road when he saw the
houses falling towards him. He ran off
home;
and I couldn’t
get a word out of him for months. He had to go to the psychiatrist….
Just wouldn’t talk about it, and wouldn’t mention his sister
either. And the two of ‘em worshipped each other. They was always
together; slept in the same room, holding hands…. He used to hide
when we went to the grave….
Then one night – about four months later it was – we was round
at our brother’s place. The boy went outside to the lavatory and
I heard him call Dad! Ay, what is it, boy? I said. Come out here! he said.
Sure, I said, what’s the matter? It was a beautiful frosty night.
He said, Look at that star up there – that’s our Sandie, Dad.
Sure, I said, that’s our little Sandie.
The boy’s all right now, and I’m going to see he’s all
right…. And I’ll make damn sure he never goes down the pit.
He’s not going to grow up daft like me.
Bereaved father talking to Laurie Lee in the pub, 1967
We were a generation that lost out. We lost out on our education
and on our futures. I can’t think of any of us who ever did really well
and most of just stayed and grew up in the village. We haven’t
gone far at all.
Pupil, Pantglas Junior School
In Mount Pleasant school, which was a similar school, I remember
vividly the first day going in, I took the remains of the upper
part of the
school, going into the classroom and sitting down there and outside
was a railway
line coming from the colliery and a diesel rumbled past, very
very slowly, and I can see the looks on the children’s
faces and mine. But it turned out alright but the actual shock
of getting back to school was
enormous and eventually everything went off alright and the children
returned to
normality.
Teacher, Pantglas Junior School
There was none of the discipline we used to have … We didn’t
go out to play for a long time because those who’d lost their own
children couldn’t bear to see us. We all knew what they
were feeling and we felt guilty about being alive.
Pupil, Pantglas Junior School
As children we never got any sympathy. We were always told we
were lucky to be alive. I suppose everybody in the village was
so badly
affected
that nobody had the time to give us any sympathy. At school,
though, the teachers
treated us differently. It was as if they could not bring themselves
to be strict with us. We lost a lot of schooling after the disaster
anyway, and most of us never really made it up.
Pupil, Pantglas Junior School
What happened in Aberfan that day was the dark little secret
when we were young and it still is. We knew we must not speak
out. We
have
been quiet
for the sake of the other people, those who lost children and
those who did not want to hear about what happened, especially
from the
mouths of their own children. … What’s more, the
survivors have never spoken to each other about it. Most of us
live in the same small village
and have grown up together, yet we all kept everything locked
away inside ourselves. Here
I am, a grown man, tough ex-miner and all that, yet since that
day I don’t
like the dark. Down the pit was all right as long as I was in
company. I made sure I was never alone down there. … When
we were young there was almost nobody left. We wandered streets
like lost souls.
Pupil, Pantglas Junior School
In those days talking of your emotions was an embarrassment.
As a child you felt ashamed to tell someone what you were feeling,
even
if you
were crying. You didn’t want them to know you were crying. I only cried
when I’d gone to bed in the evenings. If my mother heard me she would
come in to see me, But I couldn’t talk to her about how I felt – and
in the morning I would feel embarrassed. In my family we never discussed
what had happened. Nothing was said. Just tears and very quiet. It’s
the same round here today – people don’t want you to see they’re
upset. I’ve never seen my dad to cry, never. When I went to bed I
would speak to God. He was the only one I could speak to at the time. You
don’t get an answer back but you could feel there’s somebody
there. And that’s a comfort. … My Dad was very bitter for years.
It was his only son, you see. My mother still won’t talk about that
time. She doesn’t want to know. She’s blanked it
out. It was the only way she could cope. We always went to church
and she turned
atheist
for a while, which was bad because it meant she had no comfort
anywhere. But she started to believe again and I think it has
given her back her
strength.
Pupil, Pantglas Junior School
We couldn’t talk about the loss for some time. Our boy was only seven.
It threw our family life completely off-balance. [My wife] was breaking
down all the time. What can you say? You feel so helpless. You sit there
and you can’t do a thing.
Bereaved father
It gives you a respect for living. You’re thankful just to be here
and all my friends seem to be very placid, I never argue with people. We
seem to be different, for I never discuss the disaster with friends – I
think you do tend to wipe it out.
Pupil, Pantglas Junior School
Today, when a disaster happens, you bring in people who are trained
counsellors to help the victims’ families cope. But the
counselling in Aberfan then was done by the community itself.
That true Welshness, the sense
of belonging and togetherness, came to the fore then.
Detective Constable
By every statistic, patients seen, prescriptions written, deaths,
I can prove that this is a village of excessive sickness. And
the cause
is
obvious. … Psychiatrists
came and wrote "Aberfan needs no help". Now they come to study
what grief did to us. Nowhere else has grief been so concentrated. Lockerbie,
Zeebrugge, King’s Cross – everywhere they used the
lessons this place taught them.
Aberfan Doctor
For many years after
the disaster if I was sitting in an enclosed room and a jet aeroplane
would approach I would absolutely
quake and shiver
until it had gone and actually feel the nerves running through
my body. I think it also affected my driving as well. I was
very aware
of the
environment and dangers in the environment. But gradually over
the years it sort of
disappeared and now I’m all right I can rationalise a
jet aeroplane.
Teacher, Pantglas Junior School
As far as we’re concerned now, we’ve still got two boys. We’re
only separated for a time. One day we’re going to meet. The parting
and the loneliness and being without him is terrible, but it’s
not for ever.
Bereaved Baptist minister, speaking in 1996
***
Rev Kenneth Hayes of the Baptist Chapel lost a son in the disaster. He had a small congregation that morning, less than twenty including four children. There were reporters present complete with cameras. Mr Hayes wept openly in the pulpit and the service included the hymn:
Safe in the arms of Jesus,
Safe on His gentle breast
There, by His love o’ershaded,
Sweetly my soul shall rest.
Hark ! ‘tis the voice of angels,
Borne in a song to me.
Over the fields of glory,
Over the jasper sea.
© 2013 Hiraeth - Connecting with the land