Tears: Sentiments & Sensibilities

By Ken Evans

This book is about how we relate to our loved ones after they have died.
To everything there is a season, a time to every purpose under the sun.
A time to be born and a time to die: a time to sow, and a time to reap.
A time to weep, a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.

Since the time of Herodotus, how we care for the dead has been regarded
as the surest sign of civilisation, for they are still members of our families, as social beings, worthy of respect and honour. To be loved and celebrated as
Part of the fabric of family life, continuing to dwell in us, individually and communally. The Dead matter because we cannot bear to give them up.

Nabakov says, “Our existence is but a brief crack of light between two extremities of darkness.” It is in this light that we make sense of human relationships. The immeasurable weight of death - its cultural gravitas - bears down on the corpse and connects its materiality to the cosmic drama that transcends particular beliefs about the afterlife and journeys of the soul.

The homes of the Dead, (their graves or tombs) speak directly to the needs of Memory — forever in our hearts and minds.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Mar 5, 2021
• ISBN: 9781665586894

Ken Evans

Ken Evans has taught and applied ORM in English and French for 10 years. His know-how in data and process modeling and complex systems management comes from over 30 years in industry, including international jobs with IBM, EDS, Honeywell Controls, and Plessy and clients among the Fortune 500.

Book preview

TEARS

Sentiments & Sensibilities

In a time of Covid 19

KEN EVANS

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AuthorHouse™ UK

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© 2021 Ken Evans. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or

transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 03/05/2021

ISBN: 978-1-6655-8690-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6655-8689-4 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or

links contained in this book may have changed since publication and

may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those

of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher,

and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

PRELUDE

SINGING IN THE GARDEN

ALLEGRO

INTERLUDE

ADAGIO

SCHERZO

RONDO

RECITATIVE

MEDLEY

A CHILDHOOD PHOTOGRAPH

SONATA

SWANSONG

LACRIMOSA

PRELUDE

What could anyone say about someone else’s sensibility, or for that matter, about their own!

In either case, what would we expect to discover?

In one of my other books, ‘The Homely Mind of Multiple Realities’ (2019) I discussed how we experience and reconstruct multiple realities for ourselves, bit by bit, either successively, slotted between other thoughts, or alternatively back and forth. Sometimes, recognized as memories, other times with no apparent connection between each of them; each distinctive sense of reality lodging momentarily in our consciousness, before flitting away. Part of my thinking on this, drawing on personal experiences, while teaching Piaget’s and Vygotsky’s Human Growth and Development theories to Nursery Nurses, knowing at best these would provide only a very basic theoretical overview, taking my students and myself, in the wrong direction! What I wanted for them and for myself, was something more subtle, more reflexive, more personable, more poetical even; along the lines of Pierre Bourdieu’s habituation theory, describing cognitive development, as involving the whole body, mind and soul. In other words, (or in my terms), each of us seeking our own vital inner sense of Self, discoverable, if at all, only by tapping-into our real-lived (phenomenological) experiences in the Lifeworld; as a kind of wholistic organic process. As well as being a whole life-long-learning journey of self-discovery, with every discrete subtle experience, from our earliest infancy no matter how small or insignificant, attaching itself, becoming part of the whole edifice we call Self or Soul.

Most of the time, I consider these fleeting moments too brief to recall, only to discover later their subtle arrival, unannounced! Suddenly turning-up from nowhere so to speak, revealing that something of value must have stuck! It is exactly these kinds of subjective moments and memories, Husserl intended to examine, (but never got round to) in his Phenomenology; that provides the theoretical framework for exploring connections between ourselves and our environment; and the present and the past. I wish to consider these in this essay; and especially music in this instance, and how it continuously impacts on our consciousness and our identity.

Over the long years, many of these moments have become, one way or another, directly or indirectly musical! I hear or hum (or breathe) all sorts of music, as if attached to my person, adding gravitas to my body, mind and soul. Its rhythms pouring out of some deep reservoir buried in past human evolution, as fundamentally necessary as human utterances, for communicating with others, as with ourselves. Aristotle claimed; ‘There is another art which imitates by means of language alone; and that either in prose or verse . . .but has hitherto been without name.’ Of course, he was referring to sounds of music as more than simply; ‘pitch and rhythm’, that penetrates the soul, as well as the inanimate world. . . that imitates (that is represents), the passions such as gentleness, anger, courage, temperance, and their opposites. He added; . . . the right kind of music tends to make the right kind of person; and so it was, that later ‘as the miller told his tale, that her face, at first just ghostly, . . . turned a Whiter Shade of Pale, not totally unlike the shadowy, old deeply faded photograph, that turned-up amidst the rubbish on my worktable!

photo%20before%20the%20start%20of%20%27SINGING%20IN%20THE%20GARDEN%27.jpg

SINGING IN

THE GARDEN

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One such small moment resurfaced the other day. By chance I came across a small scrap of an old washed-out monotone photograph of me as a child, that seemed to have been floating around among my stuff for some time. In the picture I am standing on a small patch of lawn in the back-garden of a new address, we had just moved-into, sometime during the second world war. The garden, with its new high wooden dividing fence, separating us from that of our next-door neighbour. The photo shows empty flowerbeds, with nothing growing. In the photo I am standing where I had been told to stand for the photograph. I can’t remember it being taken, but I remember the camera; one of the first modern gadgets my father had bought. I remember also the garden, after it had been newly planted with flower beds. And next door’s lilac tree, its branches hanging low over our side of the fence, its bunches of sweet-smelling white lilac blossom, its powerful scent! My favourite song on the wireless at that time, We’ll gather lilacs in the spring again, and walk together down an English Lane, until our heart has learned to sing again, when you come home once more. Whenever I heard it I had to join in. Singing at the top of my squeaky voice, with whoever might have been singing on the wireless, knowing nothing of what the words of the song really meant; although I knew they were sad. That was why I liked it so much!

Strangely, I have no other pictures in the garden, although I spent most of my childhood time playing there. Every day, with the sweetest memories of springtime in those mid-war years. The garden slowly coming alive, with newly planted shrubs and flowers, gooseberry bushes, growing along the back fence, and next-door’s wonderful tree’s bough, hanging over our side of the fence, its luscious perfume lasting all day long. With little prompting from anyone, I would fill the quietness with my singing; ‘We’ll gather lilacs in the spring again, and walk together down an English lane, until our hearts have learnt to sing again, when you will come home once more.’ At the top of my voice, especially when played on our big wireless in the Dining Room, with the French Doors wide open. I would rush into the room to listen, pressing my ear against the speaker, to join in. I used to think the words were especially about our garden; only later to be corrected, that they were about women yearning, for the return of their soldiers from the battle-trenches. Another sad song I remember, secretly singing to myself, for the small robin who came into our garden to sing to me, that one day stopped coming. Following the words, I thought he must have been killed by an ‘arrow, shot by a sparrow’. I think it was one of my sisters who had told me the story. I thought the little robin was a small bird-person! Whenever I felt sad about Robin, I would sing to the garden, ‘All the birds of the air fell a-sighing and a sobbing when they heard of the death, of poor cock Robin’. I loved the magically-sad words! Paddy, my big sister, also sang her favourite