Forgetting How to Remember the Dead

The 11th of November 2025 was a damp, dim, grim day. I was standing at the pro-life vigil in Ealing when at 11 o’clock my Rosary was interrupted by the sound of a trumpet coming from the War Memorial just across the road for  the two minutes of silence.

There was a crowd of about four people standing at the Memorial. At the end of the two minutes, they made the Sign of the Cross. It hasn’t even been a hundred years since the Second World War, and how much our country has changed since then. To have been born then and to still be alive now must be to have witnessed the most astonishing decline in morality and Religion. Is it only those of us who remember how to make the Sign of the Cross, and think it right to do so, that can remember how to remember the dead? Once upon a time this country was Catholic, and now being Catholic in this country is like being some kind of psychotic alien. 

 

What struck me in those two minutes was how little we appreciate the peace those soldiers fought so hard for. They laid down their lives so that we could have ours, and how little we value it. 

 

People were a lot more alive back then than they are now, perhaps because there was something

obvious to fight for. It might seem like all this peace and comfort they have won for us hasn’t done us much good at all. I can’t remember which saint said it and what they said exactly, but it was something about there being more danger in times when everything seems peaceful because we are less alert to the spiritual battle. What our country does not realise is, we’ve still got just as much to fight for. The reality is, we are not living in peace at all. 

 

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Our Lady has put the pro-life vigil in Ealing right next to the War Memorial. I once prayed a Rosary with someone at the Memorial and they said; ´it’s different here, people don’t get angry with us. They just think we’re praying for the dead.’ 

 

Everyone wears a poppy, I even saw someone’s dog wearing one, but the amount of lives lost to abortion is something public conscience is far from being able to face. 

Anna Maria

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