Aaron and I then set out for a walk along the river in the old grove here in Stratford , if you go to the right you end up in the cemetary. It was the perfect day for a walk like that. The day was cool and gray, the crows joined us with lots of chatter. Aaron mentioned that Grampa (my Dad) has some relatives buried in this cemetary and asked if I had ever found any of the graves. No sooner had he mentioned it I looked up and saw one with the name Nat Fowler, who I was sure was a relative, took a few pics, went to Balzac's one of Stratford's great coffee places.
In the evening we watched a Japanese film called Departures. What a beautiful movie. This is a must see, beautiful pace, filming and story, full of grace, respect and honour. This film won an Academy Award for best foreign language film and also 10 Japan Academy Award prizes. Much of this film is about preparing the deceased for burial and entrance into the next life. Thanks to my dear friend Lori who is the most knowledgable peson I know with regard to film among other things...she passed the DVD to us.
As I was heading up to bed after the movie Aaron asked if I had had a nice day. I assured him that I had...he then said "It has been a meditation on death". I had not thought of it in that way but it certainly was with our walk in the cemetary, finding relatives then watching this magnificent film!
I must mention that chef Tom cooked up a great pasta dinner!
www.departures-themovie.com/
But it sounds as if it was a shared, and most gentle and loving of meditations on death, blessed without any particular sorrow. On another note, I think you should buy those boots, the high ones. -- Susan
ReplyDeleteThere is a sense in which we never die and, in turn, are never born. So much of our formative chronology, our childhood and humanity's historical emergence, is inherited without criticism. Then, when we reflect back on both pasts, that which we use to reflect with is constitued by what is being reflected on. There is, as Judith Butler would say, an 'I' that cannot "give an account of itself," or as Wordsworth said "I cannot paint/What then I was." Something always escapes us, and it is who we are to ourselves as we see ourselves in other people's eyes.
ReplyDeleteNevertheless, there are rich bonds of shared experience spent with those who are closest, those who knew us before we knew we were someone to them -- our parents. Still, who can know a parent more than its child; since the child is something to the parent before the child knows this, the child can forever find itself in the parent and recognize the closest thing to what is always impossible to understand about itself. If the parent is anything it is something to the child. This makes possible the chance for the child to have its own children who can return the image of their grandparents by becomming that in which the grandparents are to their children. A parent is always inbetween who it is by playing both roles to itself, and so knows best what it can be as a parent and a child. Death makes room for this possiblity, since each role must occur in succession.
"For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still sad music of humanity."
William Wordsworth
Tintern Abbey
Susan thanks for the lovely comment! Still lusting after those boots.
ReplyDeleteAaron well said and very thought provoking...my son...love the Wordsworth quote!