With Patricia away in America
for this last week, I entertained myself by picking one or two corners of the
house and ‘Marie-Kondo’ing the shit out of them. One such haven of joyless
things was a basket that ostensibly held shoes but which had become a repository
of newspapers and expensive supermarket bags.
Near the bottom of clearing
it out, I came upon a blue coloured rewritable CD in one of those clear plastic
jewel cases. Loath to throw it away, I left it on my desk, resolving to stick it
in the laptop when I was next sitting there, just to see what was on it. I imagined
it would turn out to be the soundtrack to one of the teen plays I did over the
years. It would be fun to play through the needle drops I had set up so many
years before. A little blast from the past.
Fast forward a week later
and it’s today and I’m doing some stuff around the house again. These
enthusiasms are rare so I have to try to capitalise on them when they land. Passing
the desk, I saw the blue coloured CD sitting there and decided to slip it into
the drive and see how it might entertain me.
It went in. The computer
asked me what software I would like to use to play it. It had been a while
since the machine had seen a disk like this and needed to be reminded of what
to do with it. I chose Windows Media Player – better the devil you know – and let
it do its thing as I went back into the kitchen to continue whatever the hell
it was that I had been doing before.
A song wafted through from
the other room. It wasn’t from one of my plays after all but it was from an
event all right, an event that had happened eleven years and three months ago.
The song is probably one you won’t know. It’s called ‘The Old Rustic Bridge by
the Mill’ as sung by the late Irish Tenor Frank Patterson. It was one of Dad’s
favourite tunes from years gone by and, after some discussion, it was the one
we decided to play as we carried him out of the church back in March 2012.
I walked back into the study
and stared at the computer. It gave nothing away, remained stoically po-faced,
and just kept playing the tune. Two things occurred. The first, a fleeting
thought, was just how long had that shoe basket needed sorting-out. The other
thing was more complex and more all-consuming. An almost total transportation
to that day. To the journey from the top of the church aisle to the bottom. The
litany of sad familiar faces on either side. The feel of the cool varnished
wood against my left cheek. The weight. The weight. The weight.
I delivered the eulogy that
day and I think I did okay. I felt I had been given a strong mandate when, after
Mum had died, years before, I told Dad that I didn’t feel like I should do the
talking and he looked at me and said, “Well who the hell else will do it?” So I
did it. And I felt it was okay that I did it for him too. That he would be okay
with it.
The last thing I said, in
the eulogy, was that the song that would play, as we carried him out, was one
of his favourites. I gently exhorted those assembled, if ever they should hear
this song, to think of my Dad.
I guess I must have included
myself in that request.
Today, I kept my promise. I
heard it, and I remembered.
I’ve put it away again now,
with other CDs that don’t really get played all that much anymore. Maybe I’ll
pull it out again, in another ten years’ time, and stare at it again and wonder
again which play it might have been from. A sad little play, perhaps, a very sad
one.
Maybe I’ll put it in a drive
and play it again and remember all over again…
Maybe.
