Luky;
SOME YEARS AGO I RECEIVED A LETTER FROM MY MOTHER in which she told me that one of my father's brothers had just died - from cancer, as did my father and a third brother.
This uncle was a priest in Holland, and I know little about him, since I last saw him on the day when my brother first received Holy Communion. A thing I noticed about him was the beautiful way he pronounced his words, far better than his big brother, my dad, who like myself spoke in the rather flat Amsterdam accent.
"Papa", I whispered, "why do you hit that uncle on the back? He's a priest! And won't you try to speak posh, the way he does?"
My father roared with laughter. He called loudly over the heads of the guests; "Hear what my daughter says, Nick? She reckons I ought to come to you for speech therapy."
When my uncle threw back his head and laughed, there suddenly remained no difference between him and my father. He just looked like a younger version of my dad, and just as down-to-earth and kind.
We seldom saw my uncle unless it was at a big family gathering, since his parish was in another province. All I remember of those occasions were the looks of love and pride my grandmother would keep sending in his direction.
When my father mentioned him, he often told this story:
"Nico was three years old when my mother sent him down the street to the shoemakers. When he came in with his bag of shoes, almost as big as himself, the shoemaker said jokingly: "Well, young man, are you going to be a rich baker like your father?" "No sir", answered Nick, "I'm going to be a poor priest."
"Right through school he only yearned to go to the seminary. There was a boy who knew what he wanted to be - ever since the age of three!"
In 1971 when Joseph and I went to Lourdes for the first time, I stayed at the pilgrims' hospital in the grotto grounds. Arriving early in the morning, I was shown in to breakfast with a group of pilgrims. Having travelled all that night, I was too tired to take notice of them until their chaplain got up to lead the prayers after meals.
Recalling my school French, I prepared to make the sign of the cross: "Au nom du Père, et du Fils, et du Saint Esprit." To my surprise he said instead: "In de naam van de Vader en van de Zoon and van de Heilige Gees."
At once I felt less homesick, realising that I had inadvertently joined the members of the national Dutch pilgrimage. I correspond with some of its members to this day.
After prayers, the chaplain strolled over and patted Joseph on the head. He was delighted to find I was Dutch, although I had come from far distant South Africa, and asked whether I still had family in Holland.
"Plenty", I replied, "My mother came from a family of eleven, and my father was one of nine children. In fact, one of my dad's brothers is still a priest in Holland."
"What was your name before you were married?" he asked, and I told him.
"Well, I never", he exclaimed, "you much be Nick's niece!"
It's a small world, as you discover when you've come halfway around it to meet someone who's on first-name terms with your dad's younger brother.
Although I never knew my uncle well, the thought of his death haunts me. Thinking back I recall him and those of his brothers who also died from cancer as men in their thirties, full of life, health and laughter. I seems strange to think of them as having gone forever from this world - but we'll meet again soon. And when I think of the small domestic trials and tribulations which take up so much of my valuable time and attention, and recall the painful deaths of these people, I feel that I'm wasting the best years of my life in deploring trivialities.
LUKY;
MY PARENTS WERE MARRIED DURING THE DEPRESSION YEARS in Holland.
An uncle of my father's in Amsterdam led a choir of 160 men, all unemployed. To keep them motivated and off the streets, he spent many hours training them to sing the most complicated scores. My father used to go to his uncle's parish and would praise the choir.
Shortly before my parents' wedding, my father's uncle called to see my dad. "Gerard", he said, "how would you like my boys to sing at your wedding?"
"Good grief, Uncle," my father replied, "I couldn't possibly pay them all." "Never mind the money", said uncle, "Could you manage 160 cigars?"
"Of course", answered my dad, who himself smoked up to 50 cigarettes a day. So the 160 cigars were bought and the choir sang like the heavenly host. My dad told me about the Magnificat. I know it, I've heard it sung in Lourdes, and it would melt a heart of stone.
The choir sang the Ave Maria as my mother laid her bouquet in front of the altar of our Blessed Lady, and the Mass was sung in five parts.
My own wedding in Johannesburg twenty-five years later was a quiet one, with only my parents, sisters and brother present, and one friend of mine and one of Sean's.
Although it was such a small affair, I wore a wreath and veil, deciding that you dress up for the bridegroom rather than for the guests.
My father had not exactly struck it rich during the eight years since he had immigrated to this country, and though my husand and I earned good salaries, our car and furniture had taken all the savings we had.
"Its a flop all round", I thought to myself, "but at least there'll be the music."
The year was 1960. Some of you will know that the new Cathedral of Christ the King was then almost completed. As I entered the old Kerk Street Church for my wedding the most disappointing thing happened.
Instead of the wealth of sound I had expected from the choir loft, there came a thin, reedy Bridal Chorus from Lohengrin. Though the organist played it expertly, the sound was all but lost in the Church. Alas, most of the organ had been dismantled and transported to the new Cathedral the previous week.
That same month, Princess Margaret had married Anthony Armstrong-Jones, and seeing her wedding on the cinema news and hearing Clarke's Trumpet Voluntary played with such verve, I couldn't help wishing our wedding had been a little more glamorous.
The music didn't worry my husband, but he felt envious when he read about the Queen's lending her yacht Britannia to the young couple for the honeymoon, while he and I repaired to our flat in Brakpan. Yet the contrast between the splendid music at my parents' marriage and the disappointment at my own did some good. Till then, I had always expected the Church to run by itself. I didn't know whence came the flowers, whence the music. They had simply always been there.
Now I realised that someone had to make them happen, like the great uncle of mine who took 160 unemployed men from the streets and restored to them their dignity and optimism in the choir loft of their Parish Church.
So we had our eldest daughter trained to be a church organist, starting with the piano in sub B. I know that this column is read by earnest young parents and sons and daughters who might be prepared to sacrifice the time and the money it would take to have their children trained to be the church organists of the future.
Remember, it is music which welds the wedding service together. It is music which turns the attendance of Mass into a deeply joyous experience.
Let's encourage our children to contribute to the making of music in our churches, to sing in the choirs and play the instruments. If you decide to do that, you will discover, as I did, that though you may sow in tears, you will reap in joy.
Ave Maria
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUnrLMvpQLk
Ave Maria
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQVz6vuNq7s
