A few weeks before my father died in May 2022, from complications caused by Parkinson’s disease, my mother commissioned a stone bench for the Gardens of Knebworth House. She asked that, when the time came, they both be buried in front of the bench in biodegradable coffins to become a part of the garden that they loved. And so my father, David, was buried, two years ago, in a cardboard coffin decorated with the album artwork of Pink Floyd’s “The Dark Side of the Moon”. This was his all-time favourite piece of music and was played religiously on Sunday mornings throughout my youth.
Pink Floyd themselves came to play “The Dark Side of the Moon” live in Knebworth Park in July 1975, and highlights from it again in 1990. It was the soundtrack of my parents’ custodianship of Knebworth House, as the 18th generation of the Lytton family to live here, and the generation that – in the 1970s – secured the house’s future by diversifying into public opening, rock concerts, filming, etc. and beginning the long process of this historic house’s restoration and survival into the 21st Century. My mother left a place for herself next to my father, and had carved on the bench the words, “SEE YOU ON THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON”.
A year after my father’s death, my mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She fought this wretched disease bravely for nine months, but it finally got the better of her in the first week of April. We buried Chryssie next to David late in the day on Monday 8th April, in the brief moment when – extraordinarily – the Earth was actually on the dark side of the Moon, during a lunar eclipse. The next day The Times printed a full-page obituary, but what brought tears to our eyes was the large image on the front of the newspaper of the dark side of the moon.
There will be a Memorial Service for Chryssie at 3pm on Monday 6th May at St Martin’s Church. We would be delighted if those that knew and loved her would like to attend and ask only that you let me know in advance at the email address below.
Henry Lytton Cobbold
@HenryCobboldKH
