I've just read "The Orange Girl" by Jostein Gaarder, or as the cover of the book says "by the author of Sophie's World". I bought this book for three reasons, firstly I was eating on my own in a restaurant/bookshop in Ullapool and wanted to read, secondly because I had enjoyed Sophies World so much and thirdly because it was short! It has, however, had a serious effect on me.
The book is written from the perspective of a fifteen-year old boy who discovers a letter, written to him by his late-father during his final illness. The father he barely remembered left him an intriguing and complicated letter, full of puzzles and mysteries. The initial mysteries are well told but quickly solved, but Jan Olaf's letter to his son contains thoughts about life and death from a dying man which take much longer to digest and cope with; never mind answer.
I suppose if I am honest the book is so engagingly disarming that it opened me up to think more seriously about my own mortality than I am entirely comfortable with. The dying father, dropping his beloved son off at nursery, and sitting at his PC to write, was something I could imagine doing if I knew I was incurably ill. The father's desperation not to be severed from his child, and his bitter struggle for life pours from every page. Yet (without spoiling the ending) the book ends up with a wonderfully positive, life-affirming outcome.
Strangely, with these thoughts in mind, at church this morning the sermon was on "the faithfulness of God to all generations" (Psalm 100). The message was that even if we die - God will continue to care for those we leave behind. The minister got four of us to line up in a row on the stage, suggesting four generations. I was representing the father. As each generation died off and left children behind, the message was that God continued to care.
The combination of these thoughts is both disturbing, reassuring, sobering and troubling. There's no point worrying though. As has been noted, its success as a life-extending measure is hardly admirable.
As for the mystery of the identity of "the Orange Girl", I won't spoil that for the reader, suffice to say that her title does not indicate that she's an Ulster Unionist.
Marvellous. I read a book by the same author a few years back called 'Through a Glass Darkly' about a child at Christmas preparing to die. It possessed, as I remember, a haunting optimism. Well, I feel it is time for a poem on death to ...er... brighten your blogspot-
ReplyDelete(i)Service
Damp walls and peeling paint
A dying church is the worst place for a funeral
The coffin sits in front of the choir
Who push themselves up off their seats
Creaking pews and creaking bones
To sing the first hymn
The Lord is my Shepherd…
And though I walk through the valley
Of the shadow of death
And though I stand facing
A box with an unfinished life
And though I stand singing with people
Who doubt, pale before the abrupt full stop of a quiet corpse
And though we wonder if we are wasting our time in songs
And prayers to a deaf, dumb, imagined god
We will fear no ill.
(ii)Cemetery
Graves are too cold, she said.
I would be cold, down there
With nothing but a wooden box
To keep the damp out
(iii)Refreshments at the house
Black ties and overcoats
Look out of place
In the living room
The relief of busyness
And sandwiches and clinking tea cups
“If she knew we where using this good china,
She’d turn in her grave”
People laugh about the past
It’s only the family and the close friends left.
The ones who’ll spend some time chasing the ghosts away
But in the end everyone must go home
And leave you alone
With an empty chair
A bed that’s too big
And one cup of tea