When there’s just nothing more to say …
My mother was faithful to her army husband. He served four years in Canada, in the U.K. and in Continental Europe—in World War II. Florence and Joseph. Those were years of single parenting. The war effort required rationing and making do with what little they had (nothing was wasted), so they were also the days of planting, harvesting and foraging; of putting up vegetables and fruit for unforgiving winter months. And they were the days of bedtime prayers and lullabies for the children who were missing their fathers (and mothers).
Tucked deep between flannel sheets, weighed down beneath a red Hudson’s Bay wool blanket, I gazed up at my mother’s face as she smiled wearily and then tenderly drew my bangs across my forehead. Then she began singing her version of a lullaby that originated in Scotland, in the 17th century, as the “Lass of Roch Royal.”
“Who’s gonna shoe your pretty little feet? Who’s gonna glove your hand? Who’s gonna kiss your red ruby lips when papa’s in a foreign land?”
Another of the lullabies she sang—one she no doubt sang to my brother during wartimes (he is 17 years older than I am)—was “That’s an Irish Lullaby,” written in 1913 by composer James Royce Shannon. And in 1944, Bing Crosby, one of my mother’s all-time favourite singers, released his version of the song, in the middle of these war years:
“Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, too-ra-loo-ra-li. Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, hush now, don’t you cry. Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, too-ra-loo-ra-li. Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, that’s an Irish lullaby.”
I have stretched in my imagination to consider what life must have been like for my mother and father and of how they tried to cope with the nightmares after my father’s discharge in 1946 … after which life would never be the same.
I have wondered if my mother wrote to my father when the war drove them apart. She never spoke of that.
Oddly enough, this week’s idiom, that’s all she wrote, is one I have mulled over, recently, unaware of its connection to wartimes. Each November I remember what must never be forgotten … those individuals who gave of themselves so sacrificially and paid so dearly. And the families who were left grieving and longing and who paid so dearly, as well, as war exacted such a heavy toll on all their lives.
The idiom is believed to have originated with wartime letter writing. Close your eyes for a moment and imagine the soldiers who were called out and handed letters from back home, letters that would be opened swiftly but carefully … perhaps while other soldiers looked on and shared in some of the anticipation—perhaps with a sting of sadness as each was painfully aware that their own hands remained empty.
All eyes focused on the dirt-stained hands of the soldier who was savouring a tangible connection to a loved one.
And those who were watching were at last rewarded as the soldier’s voice broke their reverie and was often accompanied by tears that were swiftly discharged by army fatigues.
“Dear Joseph …” And the ending … well, it always came too soon.
Then the silence would be broken once more—this time by another soldier: “Is that all? Is there more?”
To which would come the familiar response, in a tone of finality that all of them knew, all too well: “That’s all she wrote.”
At times, the letters were harbingers of unwelcome news: news of a death, of an illness or a tragedy; or news of love that had grown cold.
I am certain my mother must have written to my father, even though I was not privy to those intimate exchanges. Just this week, as I was writing this, there was a news story about World War II letters found within the walls of a home during renovations.
Wartime letters were cherished and were, most often, messengers of hope.
And this idiom, as with most idioms, took on a life of its own after its inception. Growing up in southern Saskatchewan, I heard it as folks were gathered around a dinner table or in the local cafeteria—anywhere, really, where neighbours met to catch up on local or national news and as they forecasted the outcome of crops and cattle.
It was in those places where “That’s all she wrote” organically became a way of concluding conversation. Occasionally it was spoken with a tinge of disappointment. But more often it was said matter-of-factly and it carried with it the sense that life simply was what it was and that, most of the time, it was good.
Another convention for this idiom is to simply say it instead of saying goodbye, when there’s just nothing more to say—like this …
And that’s all she wrote.
