How important is culture, anyway?

Weeks pass, no blog. Some blog energies are taken with writing things that might save what had been a good school, as I am chosen to be its Head; much blog energy is taken with watching my mother go through the mysterious process of what seemed very much like giving birth to her soul. The breathing and the tunnel vision looked like labor to me, and the pain… was there pain? God, I hope not. Then there was the cremation agency with their amazing inability to corral paperwork, and the arranging for nurses to visit my father, who between shock and dehydration was in a sorry state. Then there were the death notices to send out to friends far and wide, and the memorial service not to organize because of the far distance of those friends, the drive not to make – yet – to the redwoods, since there were not yet any ashes forthcoming from the cremation agency. But then there was, waiting at the end of the week, the tickets ready in my purse: the symphony.

When Mom was first striken, and Dad could still walk up the steep slope to the first nursing home, to visit her, he read her The Lord of the Rings, which he himself had never before read, not thinking much of fantasy. But she had read it to my brother and me, many and many a time, beginning with The Hobbit. Reading to her was something he could do for her that did not tax her broken memory, did not require her to answer questions like “Do you remember when we…?” some of which sparked a response, and some of which just brought more grief and frustration. But the written word, if we love it, can be held just out of the edge of sight of the mind, each familiar phrase welcomed with a spurt of recognition, bringing the delight of split-seconds of anticipation. He grew to love the story, reading it to her, and having fallen in love with the visual beauty of the films, and it gave long, sure hours of enjoyment to them both in his visits, long stretches of calm joy that she would not have when he himself was striken, not with a stroke, but with the joint-destroying infection of MRSA that left him in a wheelchair after more than a year of periodic hospitalization. Without his visits, and with me far away out of state, she was rolled in front of a television and left to enjoy herself.

Was the presence of that book, any book that she loved, not a Godsend, even though it was not the Bible? Is not any profound work of human genius, that strives to capture the best of the human experience, even if cloaked in elven-grey and walking on hairy feet, worthy of preservation and perusal? The arts of literature, of visual arts like film, of music, are they not as important to life as the getting of money and the wielding of power? Read Everyman to discover some of the great mysteries of the giving birth to the soul: power, beauty, wealth, genius, all are left at the door of death. No-one goes through the door of death with your soul but your Maker, and whatever can guide you to the peace of knowing that, whether it be a New Zealand film-maker or an Oxford don, is a blessing. A hand on an arm, a familiar phrase of Kipling or Frost on the lips, these are the sorts of things that soothe the soul in its time of agony.

The Bible, of course, is rather good at this, as well: I discovered the true purpose of the Song of Songs in reading it to my dying mother, a whole-hearted love-letter to the soul from its Maker. The Psalms are all written for passengers to the grave, and to those on the point of death; how often did David think this night in this cave would be his last? But what if we no longer taught our children the importance of reading literature better than the usual run of the printing mill? or of ever reading the Bible, or thinking of it as some sort of scary object only for use in warding off vampires? Of drawing the sorts of sketches that brought Middle Earth to life in film? or were used to design the glazing of cathedrals? Of composing the sort of stirring music that sent the Rohirrim into battle, or the sort that inspired Howard Shore to compose in the first place, in other words, classical music… Mahler, for example.

At the end of that terrible time in California – and it was terrible, over all, there is no denying it, though the presence of family, their meals and their sympathy, made it bearable – stood the shining event that would be my mother’s memorial service for me, sermon, hymns, processional, requiem, words of comfort, the one thing I really looked forward to and knew wouldn’t disappoint: the Resurrection Symphony of Mahler, performed by the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, under the baton (and sometimes just fingers) of Michael Tilson Thomas. I know this piece; I’ve sung it; like a familiar storybook, it had phrases I could anticipate with sweet glee; I knew what it does to the soul, and I needed that very badly. I pulled out two kleenxes, warned my neighbors this could get emotional and why, spotted daughter Tia in the uppermost row, and got ready to be moved from the top of my head to the soles of my feet, and let ‘er rip. It did not disappoint.

So if you need serious comfort, go high, and go deep, reach into the most accomplished creations of the greatest geniuses of the age, creations performed by people at the peak of their powers, endowed with hearts of tremendous generosity and passion, working within difficult bounds of long training and hard discipline but working with a fierce, capable joy, and you will find it. Oh, you will surely find it, if you have a mind trained to it. So we must train our minds to match the height and depth of living, and prepare for the agony of offering up our souls.

Paradise

The scene changes. We see our blogger in a nursing home room in California, holding the hand of a very gaunt woman, her mother, who has decided that enough is enough, and is uninterested in the things of this world like food and drink, but still lights up when she knows she is in the presence of those she loves, and when we tell her just how terrific she is and exactly why we love her and just how many people feel the way we do.

Yesterday, this scene would have included a very loud television showing advertisements for tacky jewelry, a window beyond swathed in curtains, and frequent, loud telephone calls, not to mention the roar of an oxygen machine: hell for the dying. Today, we tell the front desk that our mother has less than a week to live, the supervisor listens carefully before going off to her morning meeting, and within two hours, the neighbor is moved from the room where she has been for two years, the TV goes with her, the curtains are pulled back, a very quiet lady who likes to be out in the hallway moves in, the oxygen machine is turned off, and hummingbirds can be heard in the budding rosebush, outside the window. Mom can hear me reading stories of faraway places to her, or people chatting quietly at the foot of her bed. It’s paradise.

The spiral booklet from Hospice explains very neatly and sympathetically what changes the dying go through, and how we must respect their time of transition. Eating in the room with Mom seems strange: she is beyond the mundanities of sustenance. She is living off herself, and still manages to keep rosy with it, but for how much longer? Day by day the eyes grow duller, the temples and cheeks sink, the hands and arms thinner and thinner still. We keep vigil, we gather around the bed. There is time to say goodbye, to stroke the forehead, to hold the hand, the arm.

I try not to read sentimental books and I don’t allow myself to think about Mom as she was and all she was to us. I made the mistake of doing that a week ago tonight, and my eyes were so puffy the next day I didn’t look so great for my big interview with the Search Committee next night, a week ago tomorrow. The moon was high, the clouds racing over the sky, and the first formations of snow geese were crying to one another as they passed over Thomas Park; I was in the backyard at the chiminea, feeding scrap paper, pine-cones, twigs and frankincense into it steadily, and as steadily weeping away for all that. But not this week, can’t – got to last it out and then go find a hole where the rain gets in…

There is the small matter that, since this time last week, I seem to have been chosen to be Head of a school, and that one’s blogging energies may well be siphoned off to the service of the Greater Good; already I have written several necessary Documents to address the many constituents of this institution, and many more will necessarily follow. And yet, the time in Japan still awaits, though the spouse is already on his way there now and I will not follow until the end of the month, a time to finish revising the first of the two novels, so that they may be presented to some merciful publisher (one or two agents remain untried, but one is unsure about trying them) and spread their well-beloved wings.

There are more paradises to make; one begins to make them simply by asking, and hoping for mercy.