Forked no lightning: remembering and forgetting in the shadow of Big Ben

Abstract

My mother died on Monday January 30, 2012. When I reached out to shut her sightless eyes the time was exactly 11:55 am. Of this I can be sure thanks to the large clock that I could see through the hospital window. This timepiece had been my constant companion during the three days I had spent at my mother’s bedside. And, five minutes after her final breath, it tolled twelve times. The bell that provided this public pronouncement of a private tragedy is a familiar landmark on the skyline of London and is known the world over as 'Big Ben'. The metaphorical shadow cast by the Clock Tower of the Houses of Parliament serves as the inspiration for the following essay. It, like a number of other chapters in this book, can be understood as an instance of 'ego-histoire': the deployment of personal experiences as a means of considering 'a collective enterprise'(Popkin 1996: 1140), namely memory studies.