November 1969. A dark, dreich and grey afternoon. I stood at a bus stop in Cumbernauld, on the outskirts of Glasgow, next to my mother. My father had just dropped us off and I watched as his Ford Cortina sped off, the sight of his car diminishing quickly as he headed home. To a house that was no longer home to my mother and me.
We waited for a bus that would take us to Glasgow and Queen Street station for a train to Aberdeen. I was only seven years old, but I still remember that day. In particular how dark and dismal the day was, meteorologically and metaphorically. The train journey north seemed endless. As darkness quickly fell there was little to see out of the carriage window. My mother didn’t say much. Her heart had been broken for she and my father had decided to end their ten-year marriage. She believed it was best if she returned to Aberdeen where her family lived taking me with her.
I was too young to fully appreciate what was going on. I thought it was some kind of mini break, that we would be going back Cumbernauld before long. We didn’t. When we arrived in Aberdeen that evening, we headed to a dingy basement flat in the city’s west end that looked as if it still had the same furniture as it had in the second world war. It was cold. We had no television, no heating nothing to call our own. My mother borrowed an old paraffin heater from the woman upstairs and we walked through the cold Aberdeen night air to a nearby garage to buy some paraffin.
That night, as we huddled round the heater, my mother broke down in tears. She still recalls me putting my arm around her and telling her everything would be all right. If I did, my optimism was temporarily misplaced. Three days later her father – my granddad - collapsed at work with a brain haemorrhage. He was rushed to hospital but died a week later. Double trauma just before Christmas.
I was to spend the next 20 years in Aberdeen. They weren’t particularly happy. I grew up and met and married my first wife there. My children were born there. But at the end of 1989 I decided I had had enough and left. I moved to the city I have called home for nearly 30 years – Edinburgh.
Ten years ago, on the 40th anniversary of my parents parting, I wrote a wee piece for this blog. It was noticed by BBC Radio Scotland who invited me on to a documentary about the impact of divorce on children – What About The Children? It brought back some painful memories which lie mainly dormant but, on anniversaries like this, come to the forefront once more.
My mother followed me to Edinburgh ten years ago. My father died in 1997. He was just 58. Nowadays thousands of couples all over Scotland get divorced. It’s a process that is now infinitely easier than it was half a century ago. I got divorced myself six years ago although my daughters were by then adults with one of them having children of her own. The pain of divorce may numb over the years, but its impact can last a lifetime, particularly the effect it can have on children.
I can’t forget that dark day 50 years ago and, in a way, I don’t want to. It shaped my life and while it made my childhood a largely unhappy one, it meant I was determined my children and my children’s children wouldn’t endure the pain and heartache I had.
But I still find November a dark month in more ways than one.
