R.I.P. Revd Dr. Hugh Rae [1921-2009]
"Time, like an ever-rolling stream,
Bears all its sons away;
They fly forgotten, as a dream
Dies at the opening day."
-- Isaac Watts, O God Our Help in Ages Past
Here's a funny thing - the world is still turning. It was turning at 5am on the 1st of June as I lay unblinking on my bed, wide awake and knowing with cold, distant exactness why the phone was ringing; I would guess it will still be turning tonight. I'm uncertain whether tonight's turning will find me asleep - one thing is certain, it finds my grandfather finally asleep, quickly and peacefully and with less time than it takes to say a prayer.
The primary feeling is one of disbelief, of the unreality of the thing. Up until two weeks ago he was, with the exception of a little tiredness and occasional aches, in good health - barely a week ago my father flew to Japan for a busines trip, secure in the knowledge that when he returned the doctors would have a diagnosis and we could figure out which treatment options were the best. My grandpa barely held on [and it was holding on - I will never forget the pain twisting in my heart, watching him lie in bed, concentrating fiercely, conserving his strength so that he might see his son again before he died] long enough for him to make it back. I know my father well enough to see, with perfect clarity, him sitting on the aeroplane, head in hands, trying to figure out how to forgive himself if he was too late. The speed of it all verges on the absurd - what can you do?
The week of his illness and death was one of brilliant sun. Driving back through the city with my mother in the early evening, window down, there was a incredible softness to the light, the trees and buildings bathed in the kind of effusive glow that makes you want to take photograph after photograph. It has an interesting isolating quality, that light - other people seem to fade into the background, become very much part of the scenery, as if the two of us could have been the only actors onscreen in a film of our own. Chronic sleep deprivation has much to do with this, I know, but the circumstances also tend to relegate anyone beyond close friends and family into nonperson; my eyes have been gritty and tired lately, and I've taken to walking around without my glasses on when I'm in familiar territory, turning anyone outside the metre mark into nothing but a rough person-shaped blur. Distance is a curious and relative thing at times like these.
Recent memories are fragmented and unconcentrated: some important events, conversations are fuzzy and surreal, as if I had forgotten them and been reminded a long time afterwards; the minutae of the day, however, stand out sharply, like a solitary lit window in a long, dark street. The group of us standing around the bed, temporarily lost for words until someone starting singing one of many, many of his favourite old hymns and we discovered something special - our family falls naturally into four part harmonies. The district nurse, standing by the door waiting to give him his check-up, had tears in his eyes - "you all love him so much," he said. "Not many people I see have that. So many people are alone." Or the explosion of laughter as he woke from his fitful dozing to find himself surrounded, murmured amusedly, "eeney-meeney-miney-mo" to the various figures around him and drifted back off.
Other things, too, of a different timbre: the look in my father's eyes coming in the door, almost straight off the plane home, a look that went directly past everyone and took him straight into my grandpa's room before he had time to get his coat off; him knelt by the bed, head bowed, my grandpa's hand in his hair, saying, "I'm back, Dad, it's OK - I'm back"; the aching realisation, watching these things, of what it means to be a son. I'm a Christian, fatherhood and sonship are incredibly important parts of how I see the world: what does it mean when those things are taken away? "I'm an orphan," he said afterwards, with an almost-smile. A joke; a painful truth. We are who we are in relation to those around us, especially those we love - when we are reduced to the elemental core that is at the root of 'I' - what then?
The funeral was staggering. We couldn't fit everyone inside the college's church - they spilled out onto the grass, into the classrooms and under the hastily errected marquee, linked by audio cables zigzagging through doors and windows to bring our voices out to the throng of people that had gathered to pay their last respects, all 350+ of them. There are no words to properly desribe the incredible flood of emotions washing over me, standing there all of a foot from his coffin: sadness, anger, despair, rage, panic, grief, exhaustion, disbelief, but over and above all a tremendous, powerful sense of pride to have been a part of his life. And as the tributes and testimonies were given from family, friends, colleagues, fellow pastors and educators and churchmen of all generations and walks of life, I felt again the incredible, unburdened lightness that I associate so much with sitting in his living room, trading stories and advice and being taught more than I will ever even realise I have learned; I felt the fierce, explosive joy that is our only defence against death, the joy that knows without question that there is more to come. We mourn, yes, but! we do not mourn as those who have no hope.
There are no applause at funerals, though the speeches, especially my fathers, were well worth it. But there is singing. And as the hundreds of voices matched the old pipe organ, note for note, swelling up like light and life and love into the grey Manchester sky, I understood properly what the hymn-writer had been trying to say, and why my grandpa had picked this song for his funeral. And when the strife is fierce, the warfare long, W.W. How writes, Steals on the ear the distant triumph song; and hearts are brave again, and arms are strong; Hallelujah! Hallelujah! This life is a struggle, a truly terrible battle, but - we do not fight as those who have no hope. He never did, and even after his death he continues to inspire it in those of us who knew him, because he has shown us that we do have a choice, and that we do have a chance. Not as those who have no hope.
I have had, since I was quite young, an image in my head of what my death feels like, as if that one moment were a summation of my life. In it I am sat on the edge of a cliff looking over a broad, sweeping expanse of red-grey desert, watching a storm thunder and flicker round and about me as the sun sets in a blaze of blood and gold on the horizon; someone I love is sat beside me, stretched out on their back watching the first stars begin to flicker into existence above us, singing gently to themselves. It's not that I think this is how I will die, but if I could paint a picture of the many divergant lines of my life coming together to finish, that is what it would show. And standing in that chapel, feeling a solid wall of the love and respect of three hundred people behind us and several thousand more who sent letters, emails, phonecalls of apology for their absence, as I stood beside his still body I could almost hear him whispering some of his final words to my mother as she sat beside him, leaning in to catch the faint, fading sound of his voice: never be afraid to love, he said to her. You knew, didn't you? We are all of us so very afraid to love, sometimes, but as I stood there hearing the crowd of people whom you loved, and who loved you greatly in return, sing out strong and true in your memory - But lo! there breaks a yet more glorious day; the saints triumphant rise in bright array! - I reaffirmed that vow: never to be afraid to love; never to give up hope.
I am exhausted and - as long as I have gone on here - my brain is as yet unable to fully process what has happened. It's not something I'm looking forward to. Unfortunately right at this moment I have no lighthouse to keep, no cottage to retreat to, no great adventure to occupy my thoughts. All I have - enough for now, surely? - is the feeling and memory of the man the last time I saw him, as I said goodnight and he gently pulled me in to kiss me on the forehead. You have been very much loved, were his words. Well, so have you, I said, to which he replied only, oh, I know. Tonight I will fall asleep reading Konrad and Tennyson, and when I wake - who knows? We read Corinthians 15:50, the one we used to joke had been written about us: we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed! Things have moved on too fast for me, I am afraid - I have given up believing the world will still be the same place when I awake. But - and here's the thing, I think - it will still be turning.
At first I thought the world would stop. Then, later, I was angry that it refused to. Now, finally, I understand that it matters very little - the pain, the anguish, the despair, these things will pass away; love does not. He is dead, there is nothing that can change that now. But he was an incredible person, and he loved me, and love? Love endures. So must I.
Bears all its sons away;
They fly forgotten, as a dream
Dies at the opening day."
-- Isaac Watts, O God Our Help in Ages Past
Here's a funny thing - the world is still turning. It was turning at 5am on the 1st of June as I lay unblinking on my bed, wide awake and knowing with cold, distant exactness why the phone was ringing; I would guess it will still be turning tonight. I'm uncertain whether tonight's turning will find me asleep - one thing is certain, it finds my grandfather finally asleep, quickly and peacefully and with less time than it takes to say a prayer.
The primary feeling is one of disbelief, of the unreality of the thing. Up until two weeks ago he was, with the exception of a little tiredness and occasional aches, in good health - barely a week ago my father flew to Japan for a busines trip, secure in the knowledge that when he returned the doctors would have a diagnosis and we could figure out which treatment options were the best. My grandpa barely held on [and it was holding on - I will never forget the pain twisting in my heart, watching him lie in bed, concentrating fiercely, conserving his strength so that he might see his son again before he died] long enough for him to make it back. I know my father well enough to see, with perfect clarity, him sitting on the aeroplane, head in hands, trying to figure out how to forgive himself if he was too late. The speed of it all verges on the absurd - what can you do?
The week of his illness and death was one of brilliant sun. Driving back through the city with my mother in the early evening, window down, there was a incredible softness to the light, the trees and buildings bathed in the kind of effusive glow that makes you want to take photograph after photograph. It has an interesting isolating quality, that light - other people seem to fade into the background, become very much part of the scenery, as if the two of us could have been the only actors onscreen in a film of our own. Chronic sleep deprivation has much to do with this, I know, but the circumstances also tend to relegate anyone beyond close friends and family into nonperson; my eyes have been gritty and tired lately, and I've taken to walking around without my glasses on when I'm in familiar territory, turning anyone outside the metre mark into nothing but a rough person-shaped blur. Distance is a curious and relative thing at times like these.
Recent memories are fragmented and unconcentrated: some important events, conversations are fuzzy and surreal, as if I had forgotten them and been reminded a long time afterwards; the minutae of the day, however, stand out sharply, like a solitary lit window in a long, dark street. The group of us standing around the bed, temporarily lost for words until someone starting singing one of many, many of his favourite old hymns and we discovered something special - our family falls naturally into four part harmonies. The district nurse, standing by the door waiting to give him his check-up, had tears in his eyes - "you all love him so much," he said. "Not many people I see have that. So many people are alone." Or the explosion of laughter as he woke from his fitful dozing to find himself surrounded, murmured amusedly, "eeney-meeney-miney-mo" to the various figures around him and drifted back off.
Other things, too, of a different timbre: the look in my father's eyes coming in the door, almost straight off the plane home, a look that went directly past everyone and took him straight into my grandpa's room before he had time to get his coat off; him knelt by the bed, head bowed, my grandpa's hand in his hair, saying, "I'm back, Dad, it's OK - I'm back"; the aching realisation, watching these things, of what it means to be a son. I'm a Christian, fatherhood and sonship are incredibly important parts of how I see the world: what does it mean when those things are taken away? "I'm an orphan," he said afterwards, with an almost-smile. A joke; a painful truth. We are who we are in relation to those around us, especially those we love - when we are reduced to the elemental core that is at the root of 'I' - what then?
The funeral was staggering. We couldn't fit everyone inside the college's church - they spilled out onto the grass, into the classrooms and under the hastily errected marquee, linked by audio cables zigzagging through doors and windows to bring our voices out to the throng of people that had gathered to pay their last respects, all 350+ of them. There are no words to properly desribe the incredible flood of emotions washing over me, standing there all of a foot from his coffin: sadness, anger, despair, rage, panic, grief, exhaustion, disbelief, but over and above all a tremendous, powerful sense of pride to have been a part of his life. And as the tributes and testimonies were given from family, friends, colleagues, fellow pastors and educators and churchmen of all generations and walks of life, I felt again the incredible, unburdened lightness that I associate so much with sitting in his living room, trading stories and advice and being taught more than I will ever even realise I have learned; I felt the fierce, explosive joy that is our only defence against death, the joy that knows without question that there is more to come. We mourn, yes, but! we do not mourn as those who have no hope.
There are no applause at funerals, though the speeches, especially my fathers, were well worth it. But there is singing. And as the hundreds of voices matched the old pipe organ, note for note, swelling up like light and life and love into the grey Manchester sky, I understood properly what the hymn-writer had been trying to say, and why my grandpa had picked this song for his funeral. And when the strife is fierce, the warfare long, W.W. How writes, Steals on the ear the distant triumph song; and hearts are brave again, and arms are strong; Hallelujah! Hallelujah! This life is a struggle, a truly terrible battle, but - we do not fight as those who have no hope. He never did, and even after his death he continues to inspire it in those of us who knew him, because he has shown us that we do have a choice, and that we do have a chance. Not as those who have no hope.
I have had, since I was quite young, an image in my head of what my death feels like, as if that one moment were a summation of my life. In it I am sat on the edge of a cliff looking over a broad, sweeping expanse of red-grey desert, watching a storm thunder and flicker round and about me as the sun sets in a blaze of blood and gold on the horizon; someone I love is sat beside me, stretched out on their back watching the first stars begin to flicker into existence above us, singing gently to themselves. It's not that I think this is how I will die, but if I could paint a picture of the many divergant lines of my life coming together to finish, that is what it would show. And standing in that chapel, feeling a solid wall of the love and respect of three hundred people behind us and several thousand more who sent letters, emails, phonecalls of apology for their absence, as I stood beside his still body I could almost hear him whispering some of his final words to my mother as she sat beside him, leaning in to catch the faint, fading sound of his voice: never be afraid to love, he said to her. You knew, didn't you? We are all of us so very afraid to love, sometimes, but as I stood there hearing the crowd of people whom you loved, and who loved you greatly in return, sing out strong and true in your memory - But lo! there breaks a yet more glorious day; the saints triumphant rise in bright array! - I reaffirmed that vow: never to be afraid to love; never to give up hope.
I am exhausted and - as long as I have gone on here - my brain is as yet unable to fully process what has happened. It's not something I'm looking forward to. Unfortunately right at this moment I have no lighthouse to keep, no cottage to retreat to, no great adventure to occupy my thoughts. All I have - enough for now, surely? - is the feeling and memory of the man the last time I saw him, as I said goodnight and he gently pulled me in to kiss me on the forehead. You have been very much loved, were his words. Well, so have you, I said, to which he replied only, oh, I know. Tonight I will fall asleep reading Konrad and Tennyson, and when I wake - who knows? We read Corinthians 15:50, the one we used to joke had been written about us: we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed! Things have moved on too fast for me, I am afraid - I have given up believing the world will still be the same place when I awake. But - and here's the thing, I think - it will still be turning.
At first I thought the world would stop. Then, later, I was angry that it refused to. Now, finally, I understand that it matters very little - the pain, the anguish, the despair, these things will pass away; love does not. He is dead, there is nothing that can change that now. But he was an incredible person, and he loved me, and love? Love endures. So must I.
posted by backgroundbob at 11:45 pm
2 Comments:
Thank you, Rob...
Dear Robert - So eloquently written - this is something precious to look back on! Make sure you keep it on paper somewhere. You and your family have been in my prayers and thoughts very often these last few weeks and will continue to be.
Evangeline
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