On Loss – For Mum’s Memorial, 10th March 2009 – from Gillian
There are advantages and disadvantages of having a Mother who is a collector.
Such people are surrounded by “stuff”, everything that is given to them by the people they love and care about is precious. What they inherit, they keep. It also means, by the way, that there are an awful lot of pretty bad photos around that you’d want to destroy if they are of you! However if that person is also an archivist and librarian by training, as Mum was, there will at least be a chance of making sense of it all and gaining insights not only into the family history but into the person, herself.
If you have been to Mum’s home in High Kingsdown you know that she had a lot of “stuff” -- much of it charming and lovely -- but still stuff!
Even for those of us who know the house well, there have been many “finds” over the last couple of weeks:
The literally 100’s of postcards and greetings that she saved, dating back to when she was a young woman, marking not only her own holidays but also everybody else’s . .
The quantity of photos – most of them in albums, thankfully – (that’s the archivist again) – which have provided insight into so many phases of her family and her life - you’ll have seen some of them on the Memory Boards in the Crypt;
(I once noticed a photo of David Beckham on her sideboard, along with all the family photos – when I asked her why on earth she had it she said “Because I think he is a very nice looking young man!” which seemed to be reason enough! . . . )
And the video tapes, all dated and marked with cut outs from her beloved Radio Times, (Why would anybody BUY a video”, she would ask “when you can record them yourself?”) She certainly got value from the licence fee!
And the stacks of books –- she’d long since run out of shelves -- often with reviews neatly pasted in the front for future reference (Mum never could pass a bookshop without going in and coming out with something that she was either looking for or which caught her fancy – and she’s passed that trait on to several members of the family!).
Shortly after Mum’s death, carefully filed away in a drawer, we came across an article which, in so many ways, sums up Mum – not just because of the sentiments it expresses, but because it represents the up-side of being a collector, a hoarder - and an archivist. There it was just waiting to be found at the right moment - neatly cut out, dated - and - interestingly enough - copied in triplicate, one for each of us. And the right moment had definitely arrived.
It’s an article from the Guardian, 4th August 2001, by AC Grayling – and although the title is On Loss, it really is about Life. I’ve selected just an extract that I’d like to share with you today as we celebrate Mum’s life but also mourn our own loss:
“We do not forget our losses, because loss, especially of those we love, reshapes our world and obliges us to learn again the task of navigating it. Absence is a large presence – and the gap in the familiar array of people who matter to us is a far bigger space than one imagined possible until it appears. And loss can happen with such cruel suddenness that it makes us lose other things besides: faith in the world, confidence in ourselves.”
Grayling says that if we attempt to protect ourselves from the pain of loss we actually diminish our experience of life:
“If one is frugal with one’s emotions -- limiting love in order to avoid its pains -- one lives a stunted, muffled, bland life only. It is practically tantamount to a partial death in order to minimise the electric character of existence –- its pleasures, its ecstasies, its richness and colour -- matched by its agonies, its wretchedness, its disasters and grief. To take life in armfuls, to embrace it and accept it, to leap into it with energy and relish is of course to invite trouble of all the familiar kinds. But the cost of avoiding trouble is a terrible one: it is the cost of having trodden the planet for humanity’s brief allotment of less than 1,000 months, without really having lived.”
And this is Mum’s legacy to us – there was nothing “stunted, muffled or bland” about her life - she lived it well, with optimism, endless generosity and enthusiasm, even though she experienced losses in her own life. She is, indeed “a large absence” – but her presence continues - with us and in everybody who knew and loved her.
From gillian pitt on 11/03/2009