Touched by the memory of those we Love

 

Today is All Souls Day, the day when the Christian churches remember those who have gone to their eternal reward. It forms a triumvirate with All Hallows Eve on October 31^st and All Saints Day on November 01^st and is celebrated across the world in various ways. It began in 998 AD when a French monk, Odilo, who as Abbot of Cluny monastery designated a specific day to remember those who had died and whose souls were still considered to be in purgatory. Having established itself as a local feast it had gradually spread throughout the western church by the end of the 10^th century and later expanded into those lands conquered by Europeans who brought the Christian faith with them. You can find out more about the history and how individual countries celebrate by reading David Nielsen’s excellent blog here.

 What I found interesting was how in some countries like Mexico it is disrespectful to mourn the dead hence the colourful celebrations. Many other cultures commemorate rather than mourn the passing of a loved on as part of their process of life. Many of the Halloween practices began as Rosemary mentioned in her post on Monday last with the pagan celts before they became Christianised, and many of their traditions were incorporated into the Celtic Christian liturgy and practice. The Celts were people of the land, they lived their lives in rhythm with nature and with their surroundings, so death was treated as part of the natural cycle of life. This is something we can still see today whereby some Irish and Scottish families in particular still indulge in the practice of “waking the corpse”, not to mourn but to celebrate a life - hopefully – well lived.

 What has this got to do with being a writer you may ask? For me personally I have written before how my re-discovery of writing poetry and expressing my inner most thoughts through this genre, came about following the sudden death of my Father in March 2012. Some three and a half years later I also wrote a poem called “First Christmas” coinciding as it did with our first yuletide without my mother who passed away in the September but also celebrating the first Christmas of my youngest Grandson, born in April 2015 and who Mum was photographed holding before her final stay in hospital where she died.

We know too that the literary world is full of people, including already established writers, who used the death of someone close as the inspiration for putting pen to paper figuratively speaking. Memoirs and biographies of those in the public eye seem mostly to focus on the living but it is only after their passing that we often get the true measure of someone’s life and sometimes more than once, witness how many books have been written about Churchill for instance. I wonder how many books and articles will be written about our late Queen in the years ahead compared to how many were written during her lifetime.

 Death has a funny habit of bringing out the maudlin in us, we write eulogies for loved ones but some of us find it hard to mention the funnier moments in someone’s life without breaking down. When I wrote my parents eulogies, my biggest problem was what to leave out such was the wealth of anecdotes in my possession, and whether they were fit and proper for a Roman Catholic funeral mass. When we write about someone’s life we naturally gravitate to the past tense because that is where we are, in the present reflecting on the past, even though we may feel that they are present with us even years later. In recent months I have read two books by former rugby players (Doddy Weir and Rob Burrow) both now living with Motor Neurone Disease, an illness which is nearly always fatal. As you would expect, they both had their fair share of scrapes and japes especially when touring, but in amongst the humour there is a tremendous warmth about the friendships made on and off the field and the importance of family both rugby and non-rugby. Both men know they are on borrowed time yet have used the time they have left to ensure that they not only raise money for research into an effective treatment or cure, but to raise awareness. This will be their legacy long after their on-field exploits have been relegated to occasional VT re-runs on sports programmes.

 I’m sure many of you can provide your own examples, some of them very personal. It matters not; for today we remember those who have died and gone to their eternal rest. Some of us may attend church services, some may visit the graves of relatives to lay flowers or maybe like the Mexicans, throw a party.

 The poet Helen Steiner Rice wrote the following and is a fitting epitaph for those who have gone before us; -

The life of one we love is never lost. Its influence goes on through all the lives it ever touched.