© Copyright 2013 PJ Stassen
All Rights Reserved
Oh! The good times when we were
so unhappy.
-
Alexander Dumas,
1803-1870.
Jim Reeves sings the song, ‘Am I that Easy to Forget? ‘Out of sight, out of mind’, goes the
familiar adage. On the one hand are
people sometimes inclined to forget too easily, especially things that ought to
be really judiciously remembered, for instance birthdays and wedding
anniversaries. On the other hand do we sometimes
so unnecessarily remember, too painfully, also the many things that were best discarded and forgotten instead, like old grudges and especially the myriad of embarrassing
social blunders in our youth and young adulthood (and the multiplicities of later ones).
The most excruciating of them all, short of death itself, is the nostalgia of the memory of children that had left home, their beds bare and their voices silenced by the demands of emancipation, independence and progress. When my son left home in 1998, I used to stand for minutes on end at the foot of his empty bed every morning and just stare glassy-eyed into the empty bedroom, so saturated with the deafening silence of his painfully conspicuous absence. My daughter, currently engaged in a missionary-outreach in Marseille, France, is thousands of kilometres away from home, and although we celebrate her vision, commitment and dedication, she is sorely missed.
The most excruciating of them all, short of death itself, is the nostalgia of the memory of children that had left home, their beds bare and their voices silenced by the demands of emancipation, independence and progress. When my son left home in 1998, I used to stand for minutes on end at the foot of his empty bed every morning and just stare glassy-eyed into the empty bedroom, so saturated with the deafening silence of his painfully conspicuous absence. My daughter, currently engaged in a missionary-outreach in Marseille, France, is thousands of kilometres away from home, and although we celebrate her vision, commitment and dedication, she is sorely missed.
I am a history-enthusiast, and I feel that
films like (for instance) Schindler’s List, The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas and Nuremberg, although disquieting to the
extreme, are sometimes necessary to shock us out of our suburban complacency
and help us remember the plight of those parents and families who had been
victims of probably the most monumental genocidal ‘mugging’ and extermination (The Holocaust) of the modern era
I have only as recently as today heard testimony
(by an eyewitness-survivor) of a farmer in South Africa who was killed last
week by four masked men donning balaclavas; they used a 4-lb hammer to assault
him and to bash his head completely in, and that in full sight of his female
partner. That was after an older man
wielding a monkey-wrench (in self-defence) was shot dead mercilessly at close range. Man’s inhumanity to man defies description,
and I just love that bumper-sticker that reads: “If
you’re not outraged, you are forgetting.”
Ask any parent … what could be more
hauntingly hurting than the beautiful (but equally sad) memory of ecstatic children
at Christmas or during family-celebrations on birthdays? Shakespeare (Andrews: 3) writes:
Grief
fills the room up of my absent child,
Lies
in his bed, walks up and down with me,
Puts
on his pretty looks,
Repeats
his words.
On a lighter note: When the famous military leader, Lord Horatio Kitchener, a sworn bachelor, at the end of the Anglo-Boer War in 1902 left
South Africa for India to resume his military duties there, he went and bought
himself four black cocker-spaniels, obviously for companionship. As an aid to memory (and perhaps also to
emphasise that he actually was a quite indifferent shot) he reportedly named
the four dogs Shot! … Bang! … Miss! …
Damn! (Warner: 135). What an innovative way to ensure not to
forget your dogs' names!
In this song, the author ironically
endeavours to ‘remind’ God (!) that humans are inclined to be forgetful and
negligent (“Remember, I’m human, and
humans forget!”) … as if God would forget and needed to be reminded.
And then the prayer, “So remind
me, dear Lord.” Surely our Heavenly
Father needs for us not to forget … for instance about Jesus, about Calvary and
about the Second Coming. Remind me dear Lord, lest I forget.
(Dottie
Rambo, 1934-2008)
The things that I love
I hold dear to my
heart
They are borrowed and
Not mine at all
Jesus only let me use
them
To brighten my life
So remind me, remind
me dear Lord.
Nothing good have I
done
To deserve God’s own
Son
I’m not worthy of the
scars
In His hands
Yet He chose the road
to Calvary
To die in my stead
Why He loved me I
can’t understand.
CHORUS
Roll back the curtain
of memory now and then
Show me where You
brought me from and
Where I could have
been.
Remember I’m human,
and humans forget ‒
So remind me, remind
me dear Lord.
Piet Stassen
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Bibliography
1.
Andrews,
Allen (1969) Quotations For Speakers And Writers. Newnes Books. Hamlyn Publishing Group Ltd. London.
2.
OldieLyrics. ‘Remind Me Dear Lord’. Accessed At <http://www.oldielyrics.com/lyrics/alison_krauss_and_the_cox_family/remind_me_dear_lord.html> [online] 2013.
3. Warner, Philip (2006 ) Kitchener: The Man Behind The Legend. Cassell. London.
3. Warner, Philip (2006 ) Kitchener: The Man Behind The Legend. Cassell. London.
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