Friday 23 November 2012

It´s the Trifles I´ll Remember


I don´t do solemn very well. Vex, yes. Raucous, definitely. Acerbic commentary and a bit of self-deprecating wit is more my forte. It doesn´t mean I don´t feel grief, just that I have difficulty expressing it. I have read with awe the powerful tributes to Angela Cropper and know that I could never find the words of a B.C. Pires, a Sheilah Solomon, an Achim Steiner.

I also admit to selfishness. The Angela I knew was mine. Not the public powerhouse, the universally loved icon. She was all of that and more and I have shared her through the years with both her family and mine. But I like to believe that there was a part of Angela that was mine alone.

We cooked, we planned, we talked – about nothing and everything – and most importantly, we laughed and, on one memorable occasion on a rooftop in Tobago, we sang.

I´ll tell you a secret about Angela. She was funny and she was frivolous.


She was my safe place. Undemanding, non-judgmental. She accepted me as I was. Never criticizing, always offering possible solutions and opportunities. We shared a love of cooking and entertaining. Over the years we put together countless carefully planned dinner parties (she once had a catering business, did you know that?) with handwritten place cards and long tables for an eclectic array of guest; impromptu picnics; solo evenings. If my father was expected she ALWAYS made a trifle, knowing that it was his favourite dessert. She invested that trifle with the same importance she afforded to her international obligations.

When her health was deteriorating and she was in Nairobi and London and I was in Peru I was jealous of my sister´s relative proximity, Elizabeth´s ability and determination to speak to and visit her regularly. My mother´s constant updates and touching base. I was only a skype call away but often argued myself out of calling, convincing myself that it would only be a burden on her, Maria, Ken and Julie to have constant phone calls from well-wishers. But it was also that I didn´t have the words. And I was ashamed because everybody else seemed to have no trouble finding them.

I still don´t have the words. I am struggling to find them. But in the end I tell myself it does not matter. She´s still with me you see. We are still sitting in a British pub during Trinidad and Tobago´s exciting and historic Football World Cup bid in 2006. She was passing through London and had squeezed time out of her usual hectic schedule to spend the evening with me and my daughter Jade, watching the match against Sweden, kitted out in Soca Warriors T-shirts and teaching tipsy Scottish men at the next table to sing “Sweet, Sweet T&T”. 

OK, so that was two memorable occasions on which we sang.