Remembering well

I had the privilege of working in Eastern Europe for 3 years shortly after the removal of the last Communist leader. I was brought back to my time spent working there a few days ago with the 33rd anniversary of the bringing down of the Berlin wall. It made few column inches here, but it was a talking point amongst many of my friends who lived in those former soviet bloc countries. The memories of those days are still as strong with them as if the event happened yesterday. Many never believed they would see the day that they would be living in freedom and don’t want to forget the dark days from which they were delivered. They fear that new generations might not be aware of their recent past, and therefore become complacent, forgetting that freedom came at a huge cost. Like us, however, they struggle to agree an acceptable way of remembering the past.  
In the same way that we all experience the past in different ways, we all will have different times that are significant for us. Things we want to either celebrate or remember with sadness. We talk about the past using different language. We choose to be historically bilingual.
This is not a unique situation. I remember being with two American Youth leaders talking about a particular event where many young black people were injured, where one referred to the event as a mob riot, while the other talked about a time of civil resistance. Perspectives of the same past event depended on skin colour in this instance. There was no common ground for a constructive discussion about the future, or how the community might remember those difficult days. What they agreed, however, was the need to allow the other to remember with dignity, accepting there was never going to be a common agreed narrative of that event. In short, the answer for them was not to engage in a process of conflict resolution but to begin period of conflict transformation, where they agreed to work together to build a shared future, emerging from the ashes of a divided and contested past.

Like many things in our past, we will never agree a common narrative on what happened, let alone how those events might be remembered publicly. In a recent attempt to try and transform the debate on remembering our past during these days, some people now wear white or even black poppies in place of, or along with, the traditional red one. Whatever colour you chose to remember - it’s not just about remembering the past but reflecting on it, as someone once said to bow to history but not be bound by. It is my belief that we can provide a safe space to remember well and in that place, we can create the potential to allow healing to take place. A Healing which allows us to remember and acknowledge that our celebration might be another person’s sadness.