Does any story make sense of it all?

I opened my eyes.  Had I been conscious all this time or was it simply the aftermath of a terrible dream?

In any case, I was now most definitely awake and, in the most silent hour of the night, still moving closer to the edge; daring myself with each premeditated step to look into the infinite abyss that now lay just a little way ahead of me.

My heart was racing, causing my body to perspire more than it should.  Breathe was short and hard to catch.  A sign a panic, no doubt.

It took a few minutes, especially in this state, but I managed to crawl far enough to catch a glimpse of what, for as long as I can recall, had consumed me with a sinking feeling of absolute dread.

I saw myself and my future; a future, decades, centuries, millennia from now; when I am no longer even a memory; when my footprint on this earth and every one of my best efforts have been obliterated by the winds of time.

I saw the terrifying fact of my eternal non-existence and felt the sinking dread of my humanity, facing up to the realization that none of this actually matters.  At least, not in the grandest scheme of things.

Like the brightness of the noonday sun, it was impossible to look at directly.  Short, terrifying glimpses, viewed from the corner of my hand, with my hands covering my face, were as much as I could muster. 

It was morning now and, even if the sun had not begun to rise, I had a train to catch.  Already packed, I reached for the book that was still unread beside my bed and headed straight for the station, headed for London - a city that lives, breathes and sells a very different kind of story about the way things are.

The book's introduction, after the night I had, intrigued me.  It was dedicated to a family member - and all others like him - that felt that their life on earth had been unimportant and without meaning, significance or love.

I was already gripped and happy to indulge in the tale of an old man and the people he meets immediately in the the 'days' following his death, after an accident at the fairground where he worked until the age of 83.  Eddie, I discover, lived an unimportant life and, yet, each one of these post mortem encounters is singularly designed to help him make sense of his life, bring meaning and perspective, and understand the story of who he was from some more central region.  Heaven, in short, is the opportunity to fit together the broken fragments of his life once and for all.

It could be said (and no doubt someone, somewhere, already did) that Mitch Albom's best-selling book, The Five People You Meet In Heaven, is nothing more than a sentimental attempt to postpone my fear until such time as I am no longer able to feel at all.  Perhaps.  But, still, it certainly left me thinking.

Three simple, loosely tangled, thoughts:

1. The power of a single story lies in its ultimate connectivity.  'No story sits by itself,' says Albom, 'Sometimes stories meet at corners and sometimes they cover one another completely, like stones beneath a river.'  If I look at myself, whichever way I look, I will always find a fragile story of almost utter insignificance,  But it's not just me is it?  My story, as Albom illustrates beautifully in Eddie's meeting with the Blue Man, is inextricably bound up with those around me and reaches across space and time - each voice joining another, until finally the chorus of dissent against the abyss is harder to ignore.  That is the beauty of the crowd.  And, in the history of the universe, humanity will at the very least declare itself to be a 'moment' of energy and unparalleled beauty accompanied by the orchestra of the natural world (or perhaps the other way around).  'The world is full of stories,' Albom concludes, 'but the stories are all one.'  We learned from our ancient predecessors the importance of knowing ourselves.  What they forgot to say is that every one of the stones that today make up the sands of our time come from somewhere.

2.  There is one story that covers us - defines us - almost completely from our beginning until our end.  'All parents damage their children,' says Albom as Eddie comes to understand better his relationship with his father.  'It cannot be helped,  Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers.  Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair.'  As I get off the train and fall again into the arms of my adorable, teenage son.  I look for signs of wear and tear; smudge marks left by my carelessness and selfish ambition.  Later in the day, he tells me that he is stressed because something about his mobile phone bill is not quite right.  He is the victim of a cheap phone scam.  I see his anxiety and recognize myself in his reaction.  At the same time, in that moment, I remember my night and how, in the ultimate end, this moment will not and should not define how he feels about himself and who he is.  I want to do nothing else except pull him close and wipe away all of the heaviness from his heart.  Forever.  I refuse to let him wait until his time has passed before understanding how much he is totally and utterly loved.  My beautiful boy.

3. If I am in control of my own story, I'd rather meet my five on earth.  The point, in the end, is a pragmatic one.  If I'm honest, I don't actually know if I'll have a chance to meet my top five after my sand has run out.  And I'm not sure I get the opportunity to help others understand quite how much they influenced, inspired and loved me along the way.  So I'd rather play it safe and start now.  That way, when my day comes and I am required, for better or for worse, to jump into the abyss - I will do so knowing that I have lent my voice to the chorus of this wonderful life and sung my heart out from the cheap seats at the back.

Eddie's death at the age of 83 was unexpected but predictable:

A stunning impact.
A blinding flash of light.
And then, nothing.

But, then again, Albom explains, every story has at least two different angles.  So who knows how to make sense of it all?

While the world turned

It’s been five years since I left you in the fading summer of 2006.

The clocks stopped for me on that day.  And for you, I guess, it must have felt the same, at least for a little while.  We had lived as if this love would last forever.  In the days before my fiftieth birthday, it was made clear that we were wrong.

While the world continued to turn, I slept; finally at peace and free of pain.  I liked it here.  The garden is so quiet and my rest so rarely interrupted.  Time stands frozen and only the days when you come to leave me flowers stand out. 

Of course, I wish that you, my precious daughter, could have been spared these visits, these flowers, and the river of tears that flow with such consistency; and that I could have seen my daughter’s children run and play on another patch of grass.  But here is not a place where dreams come true.  There is no more story, lurking in the shadows, waiting to be told.

Sometimes you came around and told your children stories about me, huddled close together on a nearby bench.  But the echo of your voice and their laughter would always quickly fade and find itself replaced by the long silence of half lived lives. 

Today, you see, everything is yesterday for me and never holds the promise of a tomorrow – always memories and never hope.  

Still, it’s good to see you here again; once more reminded of a life that lies outside these garden walls.

I can see my sisters also in the distance.  How they make me smile.  It’s been hard for them too, I guess.  But, in the end, it’s you that has always and will always make the difference to who I was and the story that was mine to live.  In the end, my end, it was you that made my life complete.

I can hardly believe it has been five years already.  Has it really been that long?  

There is a sadness in your eyes that wasn’t there before.  But it is time to take a long look at yourself.  Don’t you see?  Is it not clear to you yet?  As the world has turned, you have grown, almost without noticing, into the mother that I always dreamed the best of me could be.

Today, we are called upon to say another goodbye, as one hundred million fragments of who I was are scattered on the ground.

And just in case you say that nothing now could come to any good, do remember this!  You are my good and the very best of who I was lives on.

Lovingly,

Maman.

An odd family day out

Mémé was a typically old-fashioned, old lady who loved the tradition of being given a sprig of muguet (‘lily of the valley’) on the first of May.

Apparently, this typically French tradition stretches back as far 1561, when King Charles IX of France received a lily of the valley as a lucky charm and subsequently decided to offer the flower each year to the ladies of his court.  By the beginning of the twentieth century, the flower had become a symbol of springtime, presented to loved ones who offer a kiss in return.

Mémé just loved that kind of thing and not just because it represented an age of chivalry and noble love that had so obviously been absent throughout her own unhappy marriage.  You see, it also meant that her doorbell rang with visitors for almost the entire day; and rather than constantly getting up from her favorite wooden chair, she would simply leave the key next to her window – so that those who knew her could reach inside, take the key and let themselves in.  By the end of the day, this simple home would be filled with the springtime scent of a person being loved.

Yesterday, we went as a family to take muguet again to Mémé.  This time, however, it took us by a different route to the gates of our local cemetery.

The fact that our youngest, five-year old girls still don’t quite understand was immediately apparent as we drove through the entrance of this huge garden of remembrance.

‘Wow!  Does this all belong to Mémé, now?’ asked one of the children innocently.

Personally, I still find it both disturbing and fascinating to visit these places.  As hard as I try, I simply can’t get my head around the terrible fact of non-existence – the fact that the person that I can still see and hear so clearly in my mind is now only kept alive by these fading memories of years past. 

The girls, meanwhile, continue to discuss and try to make sense of the situation between themselves.

‘So is Mémé under that stone?  Why is she there?’

‘Because she’s dead.  But she’s not under the stone, she’s in the sky.’

Suddenly, Léa is distracted.  She has noticed another gravestone with her name on it.

‘Look!  There’s my name: L-E-A.  But I’m not dead.  It must be another Léa.’

Driving back home, there a quietness in the car and I wonder how much sense this makes to the children.  How much can they take in?  How much, if anything at all, do they remember of their great grandmother while she was alive?  Do they remember the taste of her crepes or the stock of sweets she used to keep in the cupboard?  Do they recall the way she sat at her table all day, next to her phone, waiting for the next call? Or the secret stash of cash, bills and official documents, so obviously ‘hidden’ under the dining-room table cloth?

Over dinner, we found ourselves again discussing how it was possible that Mémé now ‘lived’ in the sky.  Was she flying a plane or living on a cloud?  Juliette suddenly interjected. 

‘She’s not in the sky, in fact.  She’s here now, sitting at the table with us.’

And who knows, perhaps in an odd way, she was right.

The Couple in their Caravan

I have had this story in my mind for a while now.  Time to write it down.

Waking up is always an adventure when you live in a caravan.

The Couple just loved that feeling of getting away from it all, living on the road and having everything you could ever need within three feet of your bed.

They weren’t an old Couple, in case you are wondering. They still had a long road ahead of them. However, they weren’t young either. The innocent dreams of youth were a long way behind them and their children had now long gone.

And perhaps it was because they were no longer around, we will never really know, they simply thought to themselves one day, ‘Why not? What have we got to lose?’

No sooner had they made the decision, they were all packed up and ready to go. And it felt the right thing to do.

That was a little over three years ago now.

Three years and the routines of each new day are still the same. He wakes up first, makes the tea and reaches across to his wife who still lays sleeping in her bed. He gently kisses her on the cheek and wishes her good morning, hoping each day that today is better than the last.

Then breakfast, washing up and organizing everything back into its proper place. In a space this small, even for only two people, you simply cannot afford to be messy.

Anyway, life is messy enough.

And that was it. Sometimes they stay in their caravan all day. Other times they jump in the car with a flask of hot tea at the ready, drive to their local beach and watch the sea roll in or children playing in the sand.

They don’t talk much to one another, except about practicalities.

After all, what is there to say?

Occasionally, they both think back to their previous life, before the caravan. It now seems a lifetime away, if not two. But they never speak about it; never once question their chosen life on the road; never once think about going back.

They couldn’t.

And it isn’t because they are too far from home. Not at all! You see, the caravan has never been roadworthy, at least not as far as anyone could remember, and still sits, as it always has, at the end of the driveway next to the home the Couple decided to leave all those months ago.

The neighbours, of course, have noticed; but are too polite to address the subject directly. They prefer to talk behind their backs and under their breath. Anyway, what do you say to a couple who have to shut the door so firmly on a chapter of their lives?

The house itself, if you were ever to pass by and peer through the windows, is quite simply beautiful. Everything has its proper place and is kept clean by the husband’s weekly cleaning routine – every Monday morning without fail. It really is a labour of love.

A more adequate, comfortable family home could hardly be imagined. It literally was the talk of the town, and the envy of it too.

But that was before the accident. A dark, December night, just before Christmas. A drunk driver, they said. Two children, aged 7 and 9, gone in an instant.

They simply had to leave.

And as the Couple closed the beautiful, red-painted door of their notoriously happy home, I guess they knew that they would never move back.

The caravan just seemed safer.

Daniel W Hardy was not my friend

Daniel W Hardy 1930-2007

I learned this weekend that Daniel W Hardy died more than a year ago.

He was not my friend, but he was a great man who had a huge impact upon my life.

The first time I met Professor Hardy, I was only 16 years old. I will always appreciate the fact that he took a chance on me and, a few weeks later, I began as an undergraduate at the University of Durham.

The years that followed under his tutelage were challenging. Week after week, I would bring my essays to his office, only to experience the full force of his incredible mind tearing into my assumptions, ideas and perspective.

Some of these moments have stayed with me even to this day.

One example: we are sitting in a systematic theology seminar and considering the theme of ‘baptism’. Professor Hardy listens patiently to our best efforts and then drops a single question into the subsequent discussion.

‘Why is baptism associated with water?’

Damn it! I don’t know. I still don’t know.

For years, I kept coming back to this question, wishing that he had put me out of my misery and simply told me the answer. But he knew better than to do that. He knew full well that he had ‘tied a dialectical knot’ (Kierkegaard) that I had to wrestle with and try to untie for myself.

Like Socrates, he understood that the role of the teacher was simply to ask the right questions.

After Graduation, my life took on new directions and challenges. Yet somehow I found myself always looking to Professor Hardy for reassurance. He had set the bar extremely high and I struggled to be the person I felt he had required me to be.

Even when I published my own book on Philosophical Theology, it was to him I turned to write the Foreward. I still feel honored to have shared the pages of a book with such a great man and mentor.

So how should I explain this connection and continuing sense of awe?

Perhaps Professor Hardy can help me here.

In one of his books, he speaks of ‘uniqueness as selective exchange with environment’. In other words (I think), the only thing that enables us to stand out as ‘selves’ is our ability to focus and give attention to specific elements around us.

Consider, he says, what happens when you sit on a train:

When I sit in a railway train passing rapidly through the countryside, my whole environment (train and countryside) is undifferentiated for me until I fasten my attention on something. When I do, the ‘something’ suddenly becomes a foreground against a background... this act of attending, also constitutes me as distinct from the environment and as engaging in a selective relationship with it.” (Hardy, God’s Ways With the World, 1996).

Here’s what I take from this observation: As our lives rush by at increasing speed, we become ourselves only by learning to focus upon certain people, events, things that define us, orient us and give our lives meaning. Everything else is ‘white noise’ in the background.

These are the fragments - the 'stuff' - that makes life meaningful.

Professor Hardy, as many great teachers, not only taught me something about what I should attend to, but also himself was a fixed point of attention – an anchor that helped my understand who and what I was, as well as what I needed to become.

John Donne once wrote, ‘Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde.’ Today I realize this anchor is gone and I feel a little more alone than I did only yesterday.

Daniel W Hardy was not my friend. But he was my teacher and mentor. He took a chance on me. And for that, I will forever be extremely grateful.