A year after my first project on Monika (a Polish migrant to the UK & her family in Poland) was completed I travelled with Monika again just after Christmas 2011 to visit her family for new year. To the city of Kalisz we journeyed again, during the depths of a dark Polish winter. The family were suffereing from the lack of light, post religouse fervour and domestic troubles. The radio was broken, bruises on the heart but we laughed again when Babcia (or Grandmother) came to visit.
We went to see her cousin and her new baby, we met & hugged her Grandmother on the bus, we visited the land her brother had bought far outside the city limits and where it now lay stagnant through lack of money to progress the construction of his dream house. Snow had fallen and the weight of a new year after Christmas was heavy as a lead weight in the air. We talked of family history ,of tragedy and love, of the despair of men and their vodka dreams and the heavy burden of Mothers and of daughters. We spoke of lost dreams and walked in a white fever that cold January week in Poland.
A few months later after returning to the UK once more 'Grandmother Regina' died. We could not or did not want to return for the funeral, we prefered to remember our last happy parting and not the ebony of grief. But still the heavy blanket of winter remained and the memories of last kisses and fresh loss would not be shaken loose and continued to caress our waking dreams long after deaths white-fever had left our shaking hearts. Only icy silence remained in our cold English bedroom where we held each other under the shrouded covers, so far from the ones we loved and their unfulfilled dreams.
