Remembrance of Things Past

Sorting through old papers over the last couple of days I came across my father's memorabilia. He died in 2006 and while those memories have faded, many returned as I looked through his and my mother's photographs.

Photos taken by him, and of him, we children, our mother and other relations.

I found my parents' wills, my father's funeral and executor's arrangements and, most poignant of all, a set of reminders I had made for the day of the funeral.

My father had been a musician when younger, and played the clarinet for pleasure, teaching, with local orchestras and bands and for his small church until his death. He asked that at his funeral we play the Going Home movement from Dvorak's Symphony from the New World (see here for a wonderful arrangement).

This is my reminder list:

-Tape of Dvorak

-Tape of Dad + Mum + Dv [or Dr...I forget what this referred to, but dad and mum had performed a number of items together, notably Schubert's Shepherd on the Rock--many an evening this put we kids to sleep as they performed together in the lounge room after we had gone to bed.]

-Polish Shoes [i.e. make them clean, not their nationality]

-Mount on plastic

-clean ribbon

[I have no idea what the last two were for]

-call Jeanette

-S----: dad's cashmere jumper + our gift

-call RSL 9625 5500

-Normie C. check speakers?

-Emma A - check work to perform [dad's clarinet student]

As I went through these things I pondered the brevity of life, its griefs, its joys. The joys we shared as a family, the wonderful life our parents provided and our wonderful wider family: cousins, aunts, uncles in abundance and grandparents alive through our childhoods.

But for all its ups and downs, life runs like sand through our fingers: impermanent, mainly unnoticed, and quickly forgotten by those who may come after us. The futility and horror of death sat with me. It is unremitting, and confronting. All the great things we have to remember others by remain only in images and scraps of notes on paper, memories of course, the odd recording.

I looked at my father's old harmony notebook, which grew into his notes about anything. Fragments of his rich and creative life were in my hands, but once it was his flesh and blood. His thoughts, his loves, his hopes and his ambitions.

The Psalmist came to mind (Ps 103:14-16):

As for man, his days are like grass;
As a flower of the field, so he flourishes

When the wind has passed over it, it is no more,
And its place acknowledges it no longer.

 But the lines preceding, full of such hope:

He has not dealt with us according to our sins,
Nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.
For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
So great is his lovingkindness toward those who fear Him.
As far as the east is from the west,
So far has he removed our transgressions from us.
Just as a father has compassion on his children,
So the Lord has compassion on those who fear him.
For he himself knows our frame;
He is mindful that we are but dust.

I then turned to my favourite passage; written perhaps centuries before the psalm, yet also full of transcendent hope and the power and love of God (Job 19:24-26):

As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives,
And at the last He will take His stand on the earth.
“Even after my skin is destroyed,
Yet from my flesh I shall see God;

Amen