Of music and memories
On a quiet Sunday afternoon I went with a friend and her mother to a choir recital in the St George’s Cathedral. I did not think twice before accepting their invitation – I love, love, love their company and I have always been a fan of conductor Richard Cock.
And the St George’s cathedral has always been a magical place to me, ever since as I teenager when I walked into the cathedral, escaping from the humdrum outside and seeking some peace and quiet in the midst of a shopping spree. I was the only one in the cathedral. I stared in wonder at the stained glass windows and the strange quiet beauty of the quiet church. I almost forgot to breath. And then the organ started playing… I was only fifteen then, but it was one of those unforgettable moments in time.
So there I was, a couple of decades later, on my way to the cathedral with my friends. Admittedly, the cathedral holds quite different memories for both the mother and daughter, who attended many vigils and protest meanings there in a very different political past when I was still clueless and cocooned in my bleached little comfort zone.
The moment we sat down, a very different memory slowly emerged. And when the organ started playing, I suddenly remembered a Sunday evening almost twenty years ago when I attended an organ recital there with my dad. The older Temmingh was playing, one of his last recitals, if I remember correctly.
At first I was a bit confused as to why it took another recital to bring back this memory. Usually I’m a walking archive. And then, as the memories flooded back, I remembered a very dark and painful period in my relationship with my dad. It was during this time that we went to this recital, probably an effort from his side to try and understand. But I also remembered a side of my dad that often made me wish I loved him less – he could sometimes be so ruthlessly unforgiving. I suppose I could have loved him less and felt less miserable when I did not always live up to his expectations.
If you do not know me well, you’ll probably never understand the significance of what I just said. It only took a few notes of the organ in the St George’s cathedral to unleash a flood of buried memories and to give me the courage to admit what years of therapy has so far failed to do.
And in a sense it made me free to love my dad even more and cherish his memory without the dark shadow of not wanting to remember always hovering in the background.
With my dad’s last birthday, I insisted on having the family over at my place for a luncheon celebration. My mom and dad were all packed up and ready to move to our holiday house where my dad would spend his retirement. And my dad didn’t want a big fuss on his birthday. But I can be very persistent and we spent a lovely day together – luncheon under the trees. One of the dishes I especially made for my dad that days, was this glorious moussaka. Twenty seven days later he was gone forever.
