Posted on July 19, 2019. Updated August 19th 2025
The English word for “padrino” is godfather, and for “madrina” is godmother. These English words more clearly describe the role of an important person as a witness at the baptism and in caring for the spiritual and Christian development of the newborn. Sometimes, the godfather and godmother can even assume the role of father and mother if, through some misfortune, the parents pass away.
In fact, it was only in the fifth century that the importance of the godfather and godmother was fully recognised by the Church.
Of course, the religion of the witnesses at the baptism must be identical to that of the parents, and this was one of the many difficulties my mother faced when she emigrated from Milan to be with her English husband in London.
They married in a church near Porta Nuova (Santa Maria Incoronata?) in April 1948. My mother had already been pregnant for several months (a situation considered quite irregular at the time) and I entered the world the following August in Lewisham Hospital, South-East London.
Arriving in a large and grey (as it was then) foreign city, with little knowledge of the language, notorious for its semantic deceptions, its eccentric grammar, and, above all, its pronunciation; welcomed among my father’s relatives, not all of whom were welcoming to a bride from a country that a few years earlier had been an enemy of the United Kingdom, and, above all, from a Protestant nation, Vera wanted to find a godmother for my baptism (I don’t remember who my godfather was). She found one among my father’s relatives, since her husband’s mother came from a family of lapsed Catholics. I was baptized in Saint Saviour’s Church in Lewisham.
My mother became close friends with this relative, who, however, remained Catholic. She was a cousin of my father’s and her name was Helen Irene Search. Our maternal grandmother, Norah née Lynn was one of many siblings. The boys, Thomas, David and Joseph died in the First World War. The girls were Mary, Lavinia, Sarah and Ruth. Ruth died at the age of 9. Mary married but died young and Helen was her daughter. Helen was looked after by Sarah and husband George after her mother died.
I remember little about Helen. In 1954, she was struck by cancer, and I went with my mother to visit her in the hospital. I remember Helen’s sweet face and her weak but gentle voice.
Shortly afterwards the inevitable happened. My mother was in Italy and told me she received a letter from my father, not with a black border, but with the words written on the envelope: “Read this in a quiet place. This letter contains sad news.”
For my mother, the death of a dear friend, one who had welcomed her with genuine cordiality among her new in-laws in a foreign country, the only one of the same religion and with a similar outlook certainly was a particularly hard blow. I remember that, especially in the first years after Helen’s death, she would take me to visit the cemetery where my godmother was buried, the one in Erith. The cemetery was spread out on a hill not far from the Thames, which in this area of east London takes on the size of a large estuary.
One day, a wind was blowing so strong from the east that, as a child, I could barely stand up and didn’t want to walk across the cemetery to reach the grave. ‘Come on,’ my mother said, ‘don’t you want to visit your godmother?’ And so I reached the grave.
Years later, when I was a teacher at Erith College, I realized that the cemetery where my godmother was buried was nearby, so I visited it with my wife. It was sy to make out the grave, and the inscription was clearly legible.
I returned again, years later to the spot in the cemetery where I remembered Helen was buried. I spent over an hour searching for her, but to no avail. I asked a warden if he could help me. He gave me a telephone number for the local funeral parlour.. I asked, ‘Has the grave been exhumed?’ ‘Not at all,’ he replied. ‘Here, when you are buried, the grave remains there forever. Only time will make it disappear into the darkness of the earth.’
Two days later, a town hall employee sent me an email with the number and the section where my godmother was buried.
I returned to Erith and recognized the cemetery warden who helped me find the grave almost immediately. I say “almost immediately” because many of the graves had been obscured by bushes, shrubs, and succulents.
Anyway, I found it: my godmother’s last resting place on earth.
I had to do a little cleaning to remove the plants from the inscription marking her name, the date of death (January 13, 1954), her age at death (forty-three), and the inscription “Rest in Peace.”
I hadn’t brought any flowers with me, but I picked a few daisies and some yellow-flowered succulents and placed them in a container at the head of the grave.
I remember that the monument was arranged by Helen’s immediate family, and that the grave was once always well-kept. What happened to that family?
It was up to me, the godson, to make her name known to the world again.
Maybe I’ll have to find a stonemason to restore the tomb’s marbles. At least my godmother had a visitor. Far from a faint memory, I own only one book by her, Rudyard Kipling’s “The Jungle Book,” with its fabulous tales of Mowgli, Shere Khan the tiger, Baloo the bear, and Rikki-tikki-tavi, the mongoose who saves the boy’s life from Nag the cobra by killing the snake.
It’s a fabulous book, one of my favourites; a collection of stories that inspired me years later to hitchhike, as a teenager, to India, a wonderful country I later stayed in for two years and which I revisited with my wife in 2000 and 2017.
When I first wrote this account I didn’t have a single photograph of my godmother but on 19th August 2025, exactly six years later, I received an email from my cousin Joanna enclosing a childhood photograph of Helen which my cousin Freesia had sent her. It clearly shows Helen in her Confirmation / First Communion dress holding a bunch of flowers. Thank you so much dear cousin Freesia for this wonderful gift.
Gone with the Wind:
memories fade
but the heart remains.
