Chris McDonnell, UK
christymac733@gmail.com

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December 6, 2017

The colours of Autumn, forgotten stories

Having a drink in the coffee-house the other morning a woman I recognised but whose name I could not remember, came across to my table to say 'Hello'. She knew my name but my recall didn't help me with hers, till with a laugh she reminded me. I had taught her children in the final years of my being a headteacher. With Emma was her eldest daughter, Michaela; they were on her way to her graduation... that is one of the great give-backs from teaching when, after many years, past-pupils greet you with a smile and are willing to stop by for a chat.

Too easily, memory fades. The sounds of voices hover in the distance, faces are often recognised but their names have drifted and the connection is lost. That is one reason why it is so important to talk with the young ones of a family, to pass on the oral tradition of the tribe, who they were, where they came from, what they did. We exercise our memory by constant recall, by the exchange of our stories, by talking to each other.

Sometimes we are taken to places with memories we would rather forget, but like it or not, they too are part of our story, they formed us in more ways than one.

In Newman's epic poem, the Dream of Gerontius, the Angel voice has these lines:

What a beautiful phrase that is, 'memory lacks its natural resting points of years', those places where we can pause for refreshment and rest awhile. Set to music by Edward Elgar, Gerontius brings together two great catholic lives of the late Victorian years, Elgar and Newman.

In the hymn Lead kindly light, Newman reflects on his own memory, his own experience.
'And with the morn those angel faces smile,
which I have loved long since, and lost awhile!'

Another poem, whose author is not known, Western Wind, has these lines of memory from years long gone, the passage from youth to old age.

The Early Church passed on their memory of Jesus, one to another, through preaching and teaching, through the example of their daily living and in some instances through the written word. The Gospels, the Letters of the Apostles form the written tradition of the New Testament. In every time, the presence and example of his followers is a living testament that we share. And that includes those of us who are 21st Century Christians.

Now, in our time, our physical memory is supported by the digital memory of computer logic, the hard drive of the desktop and the portable store of the memory stick. A convenient way to store masses of factual information that comes our way, day by day.

So be it, it helps by providing a filing cabinet for what seems an endless mountain of junk data.

But what about those memories that cannot be digitised, those memories of people and places that still hover in our consciousness from many years ago? The emotional memory of a child's voice, the tactile memory of hand-held love, the scent of a Summer's evening? All of them important, all of them part of the pattern of individual lives, part of our story.

The gradual loss of memory limits our experience of journey, we can no longer rummage through days long since gone to renew past songs and so we are limited to the now of being and the tune is lost. With our extended life span in the West, dementia is an increasing load that both the individual and society have to carry. The loss of where we have come from is a huge limitation that disconnects relationships in a painful manner.

The death of a close friend or near-relative brings with it a journey into a void from which there is no return, things unsaid remain unsaid, leaving only the scattered fragments that, day by day, we once shared along the way. We treasure what we have, regret what we have lost, we are left to continue our journey in faith, one step at a time.

In the middle of writing these few words on memory, a friend knocked at the door to take me out to lunch. I had forgotten he was coming!

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