The books, the theology, the churches, the schools, the education: they cannot seem to convey the sense of wonder that gave rise to the ideas about God, the ideas we call Physics or Evolution or Geography, etc. The people who wrote the first books, who dreamt up to first ideas were seized with wonder, wonder in both senses of that word: awe and conjecture. Being told about things is no substitute for this. How curricula squeeze it out!
My father was an accomplished, big-hearted man, naturally able and rounded in his abilities, with a good mind and skilful hands: woodwork, plumbing, painting and decorating, car maintenance, printing, bookkeeping, cooking, modern ‘O’-level maths, a smattering of Spanish, green bowling, a good bass voice and sense of harmony, and a graceful, graceful dancer. In his last year he got to grips with an iPhone, with a laptop computer, with email and the web. He loved Beethoven’s music; he loved the West Country moors.
Friends speak of him as… “a gentleman, always with a welcome cup of tea, and with the ability to make me laugh;” “kind, interesting, and really rather good looking;” “a lovely man – very kind and with an easy laugh.”
Physically, he was fearless. I once spent a terrifying day with him, me clinging to the top of a scaffolding tower while he perched on a tall ladder, merrily setting to with a 14lb hammer to demolish our chimney stack and then tiling the resulting gap in the roof.
Dad spent all his working life in Southend, rising to Deputy Civil Borough Engineer for the area. He took me to Southend Airport where he was working on the runways, and down a massive flood-water drain. A late project raised the sea defences along the Estuary. He believed in being community-minded and his work was for the folk who live here.
He has one, crucial quality that stands out. The best start in life is to be loved by one’s parents and I know, in my bones, that he loved me. He was always able to say and show this love. When Zoe and Jason some names removed by request were young, I saw how he must have been with Lindsay and me when we were young: at ease, strong, tender, warm: loving. Latterly, when we visited him with my children, I saw how he gave them the space to approach this now elderly, ailing, bearded stranger and then, when they did, there was his deep warmth and delight: they naturally took to him, enjoyed seeing him, and often asked to speak with him on the phone. He simply did care about and love his children and grandchildren: in the way he was with us physically; in the heart-ache and the thousand natural delights that fatherhood is heir to. I count us very blessed by this.
In the last few years of his life there was diminution: a closing in and a closing down of his physical world. What heartened me was an opening out of his intellectual and spiritual life. He read widely – science, politics, biography, geography, as well as novels – and followed world events. He was concerned about what was happening in world beyond his room and the depth of his caring was moving. He worried about AIDS in Africa, for example. He prayed about some of these things and he prayed for us, his family.
So, these are the things I shall remember of Dad: an accomplished and intelligent man; a man who loved us; and a man of hidden and deep spirituality.
So, what to say about Dad as he is now? This has been a hard Eastertide: new life is a hope, rather than a present reality. I don’t imagine that I shall meet Dad face-to-face in another life (though I’d dearly love to be proved wrong). But, there’s a line in a funeral prayer that talks about “God who brings us to birth, and in whose arms we die.” It gives the sense of something much bigger at work than our little lives. We are always in God.
The First Law of Thermodynamics proposes that in all the energy transformations of this world, though things change, nothing is lost. Dad has changed from how we knew him and is about to be transformed again. All that my father is and was continues, though utterly changed and in other forms. The mark upon Creation that Dad is, remains; he is held in God‘s arms.
My father died yesterday, Easter Sunday. This picture was taken the day before. He was in a nursing home. One of the carers took his order for supper at 4.30pm and he was found dead at 5pm. He was 82, has not been in good health for a few years, and has had a particularly trying last 6 months. So, while I and the rest of his family are in shock and I miss him terribly, I think this is a graceful ending for him. He is survived by my sister, Lindsay, and me, and by Helen, his second wife, and by Zoe and Jason, my half-sister and brothersome names removed by request his four grandchildren, Jessica, Zach, Hannah and Esther.
Yesterday evening, after my sister called to say he had died, I had an hour with him during which Claire said prayers, and I had time to say some goodbyes on my own with him and read him Psalm 139. I feel grateful and blessed that he loves me, and that our love has been said out loud to each other many times in recent years.
It is a sudden and unexpected death and the coroner has decided it is necessary to have a post-mortem. This will put back the date for a funeral by at least a few days. Claire, the girls and I are on holiday this week and we have decided to carry on with our plans for a few days in Dorset.
I am agnostic about what happens when we die – I think that is the only honest position to take – but I know that we are loved by the Universe (as any child would be), I trust God, and I believe in the First Law of Thermodynamics (things change but nothing is lost). Whatever is happening now to my Dad, I know that 'all will be well' with him. Some of you pray and meditate and I should be grateful for your prayers (however you 'pray') for his transition (in whatever way you happen to think of that).
“My job is not to solve people's problems or make them happy, but to help them see the grace operating in their lives.”
“Prayer is a subversive activity. It involves a more or less open act of defiance against any claim by the current regime.”
Oh souls created for his greatness and summoned to it - what are you doing?!
The Maytrees were young long ago. They lived on what still seems antiquity's very surface.
If You Want to be Understood...Listen
It's intimacy without intricacy.
The good ones screw you, the bad ones screw you, and the rest don't know how to screw you.
There's two kinds of people in this world, there's winners and there's losers. Okay, you know what the difference is? Winners don't give up.
You get treated like a dumb animal long enough, that's what you become. You may find Narnia a more savage place than you remember.
There is no secret ingredient ...
Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us.
It is [the] wounded sense of self, [the] sense of emptiness and isolation, which underlies the violence, addiction and greed disrupting our live.
Part of the tremendous power of addictions is that they offer ways of avoiding the threat of nonbeing.
Posts
All Comments
