musingsonwomenshealth.com

Reflections on 40 years as a doctor in Women's Health

Seek not for whom the bell tolls


Do you ever put something away for safe-keeping, only to find it has changed in the interval since you last looked? Retirement can be like that: hanging a once comfortable identity in a closet somewhere, and discovering it no longer fits when you try it on for old times’ sake. Not only that, but the colours have faded, and the style is embarrassingly dated; you can no longer wear your old clothes; you can no longer be who you once were…

When I was young and still living with my parents, I sometimes felt a need to hide things from them -nothing salacious, nothing illegal, simply aspects of my developing life which I felt too embarrassed to share: phone numbers of girls at school, notes about what to say to them; a stochastic diary of sorts, I suppose. That was when I decided a sock drawer was a suitable repository for my innocent secrets. Who would riffle through socks? But in those days we moved a lot, and I have to admit I lost track of most of the socks I had been trying to preserve. Anyway, as time, and my life progressed, I came to realize that quiddity cannot be stored in a sock -nor identity in a closet…

When you retire, you begin to see your life as History, as a collection of random, once brightly-coloured memories that have turned sepia-coloured and unreliable. So what is it we actually carry with us into our dotage that we can trust? In retirement, do we find we have invested too heavily on the accrual from our remembered past?

Unlike random, faded photographs of you stored in a box in the garage, some things are ringed with unusual clarity for which feelings linger long after specific details are forgotten. Like the famous medieval Clouds of Unknowing, you cannot see them with your eyes; it is in surrendering to them that they are understood; it is in feeling them that you are absorbed. I do not need to see a picture of my father in my mind to understand the twinkle that was always in his eyes; I do not require a vision of my mother’s face to feel her smile.

But there are also important things, if only shards, that cling to certain objects; even touching them is enough to evoke the feelings. I suppose that is a type of memory, and yet more of emotions, than events. Some of the owner still abides within the fabric, still sits upon the texture like a welcome touch that has discovered you again at last.

I found a ring the other day. I have to say I’d forgotten all about it until I found it in a little wooden box in the corner of a drawer I seldom open. A golden signet ring, it was something my father always wore; my mother must have given it to me after he died, although I don’t remember its transfer to my care. There were so many other things that characterized his being, that perhaps the ring was lost among the crowd. His blue, blue eyes that always smiled, were what affected me the most I suppose, and the sweet smell of pipe tobacco on his clothes; perhaps I had no need to remember a be-ringed hand which was never lifted at me in anger.

The unexpected discovery of the ring brought tears to my eyes however. Something about its very presence was enough to trigger a sense of loss, an emotion I hadn’t experienced since his death almost fifty years ago. Did the ring simply remind me of him and his physical absence, or was it something about him which, despite the elapsed time, was suddenly there again? Did a ring which I hardly noticed all those years he wore it become, in a sense, him again? Surely it’s more than the fact he touched it, wore it, and probably felt undressed somehow in its absence; I wouldn’t feel the same about his shoes or hairbrush I don’t think; I wouldn’t mourn the loss of his favourite book -although his notes in the margins of some pages about his thoughts that had occurred to him on reading them, might come close…

I’ve been thinking about these things now that I have more time to myself and wade through the many years I’ve shed: what makes something valuable to me that to others has little intrinsic worth? Surely in the course of an octogenarian existence, my father owned many things that he valued far more than his ring – his Bible, his church, his tools; he loved and influenced other things he treasured even more: my mother, my brother… and me, to name the really important souls which gave purpose to his life. So I am puzzled by the effect the ring had on me.

He came from a strict religious background, and although he never forced his beliefs on those around him, he seemed immune from many of the issues that worried the rest of us: he remained steadfast in a world that seemed to race towards material rewards, a world that seemed devoid of guiding principles, devoid of what he maintained was soul. In his mind I sensed the concept was more ethical than religious: an impalpable, invisible manifestation of how a society -how a person– should act.

Remembering a feeling about a person is perhaps more difficult to pin down in one’s mind than picturing how they looked, but I suspect it has a more powerful effect. For some people like my father, it is more likely how they acted rather than how they looked which we recall most vividly. It is, at any rate, what I have carried with me through the years. His face changed, his body wizened like most people as they age, but he -whatever made him the person I knew and loved- stayed the same. He continued to infect everything around him with his generosity, his spirit, his soul until the end.

I was in a different city when he died -I’d forgotten about that after so many years- but I know he didn’t die alone; he left his mark on all who knew him. No, he was no saint, nor I’m sure, despite whatever flattering eulogies were uttered at his funeral, was he remembered like that. He was my father, though, and he lived in kindness throughout our life together; as far as I could tell, he wore his soul like the ring on his finger -it was always with him.

I’ve decided to wear the ring -well on special occasions at any rate- but not to pretend to my father’s role in the autumn of my life, only to remember his soothing effect on those around him. Although it too late for me to be regarded like that, I am at least my father’s son…

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gozzter

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