Letters To Koko

Dearest Koko,  It is so difficult to write about a person you have never known. A person who has existed only in photographs and very indistinct stories. My mother’s father, my Dadan, is a figure like that for me – a person shrouded in mystery. Yet I think it is important to piece together this very fractured jigsaw. When we were very young all that we knew or were told was that he died at sea and the family was not able to see his body after the demise. They just received a telegram and that was that. No one liked to speak about the incident or about him at all, and we were quick to learn that it was a raw nerve not to be touched. But he was not just that - not just a person who died at sea - he was so much more, and I think I would have loved to know him and be his friend. The first couple of things which come to mind when I begin to stitch this together are of course the smiling face in the photographs, the handsome man in a uniform, the aviators, the fountain pen with his n...