"An Old Man and his Grandson" by Domenico Ghirlandaio in the Louvre Now before anyone panics at the subject matter of my previous piece and this one, do not fear. I am not anticipating my imminent demise (although I am no less aware of my mortality than someone of my age and ailments should be), but I am reflecting on how we should respond to our twilight years. I do this both in the light of a series of funerals that I have recently conducted or attended at which the poems cannibalised here were read by me or others, and the attitude of some of my elders recently. Some are a joy to be in the presence of despite the challenges they face, sharing their insights, experience and encouragement with grace and humility (some in a way they didn't when they were younger), and others who are less of a joy to encounter. There are usually multiple reasons for this, and I hope I do not respond to them any less graciously than I do to others. But I equally hope that I do not behave
It has been a long while. Busy-ness followed by a blessed period of avoiding busy-ness and my computer, but this reflection has been rumbling around for a while, perhaps because my morning starts have not been so frantic of late. For years I've loved the above version of the African American Spiritual "In that Great Getting Up Morning" by the operatic sopranos Jessye Norman and Kathleen Battle recorded at the Carnegie Hall. I have never, however, been much of a morning person, yet in his letters to the Corinthians and Thessalonians when writing about the resurrection uses the image of waking up in response to a trumpet reveille... In my mind, the only thing worse could be bagpipes... But then a couple of days ago at a funeral for a wonderful man who loved literature, his niece read the short poem "Resurrection" by Vladimir Holan which shares some of my antipathy to a rapid, raucous entry into a new day, even an eternal one... So in the light of that I finis