31 January 2011

Gather quickly
Out of darkness
All the songs you know
And throw them at the sun
Before they melt
Like snow

Bouquet

Langston Hughes

Yesterday, we went to a memorial service for Georgia Carroll Kyser -  widow of Kay Kyser (and his College of Musical Knowledge).  There was no minister and there were no prayers.  Only the memories of family and close friends. The service was held in one of my favorite buildings on the campus - Gerrard Hall - built in 1837.  It was a chapel and is now a concert/lecture hall - three major renovations later. Langston Hughes spoke and read poetry there in 1931.  It is a strong building, with a high, steep balcony that wraps around the single room on three sides.  The walls are painted a warm pink that can only be justified by history, white wood trim, polished wood floors; white plantation shutters line the windows. Two of her daughters spoke, and one of her grandchildren read a posthumous thank you note, written to honor the lessons learned. Friends, neighbors, extended family described her influence on their lives and the life of the community. She was a fixture in Chapel Hill society for more than fifty years. Reels of old film and interviews were edited down into a beautiful video - she was magnificently beautiful - so the end of the service was marked by her voice and her image. 

As we drove home, I found myself thinking about the lives we live...the way we open and close our door to friends and family, to strangers and guests.  I found myself thinking about the conversations at the dinner table, the color of candlelight when it drifts across the faces of family. How we remember one another, where and when.

I have never been to a memorial service quite like this before.  Without the constraints of liturgy or the insistence on an altar call to remind us of the frailty of bodies and the promise of eternal life, what remained was a song without melody, sung by the next generations, composed from memory, placed in stanzas, and like the Langston Hughes poem suggests, thrown toward the sun. 

I woke up thinking about their memorial song - the song her family threw toward the sun yesterday.  One stanza for beauty - for creating a home, a place in the world where beauty can rest for a moment.  One stanza for hospitality - letting students live in her home, widening the table for suppers with friends all speaking at once. One stanza for politics and opposition to the war in Vietnam.  One stanza for life, rewritten in North Carolina.

I only met her once - at a party at the Chancellors house at Carolina. But I know her granddaughter, and like her very much. Her loss is what made me attend and listen. She was, like Mother, that perfect configuration of great bones and posture, of elegance and fun.  She was strong, opinionated, and dedicated to beauty. A transplant to North Carolina,  as I sometimes say about myself, she was neither Tar Heel born, nor Tar Heel bred, but by God, when the day comes, I hope I will be Tar Heel dead.

When you take away the prayers and the preaching, the sermons and the dogma, the rituals of generations, all you are left with is what one offered during the one life they lived.  And, I have to say, it was as inspirational as any service for the dead I have ever attended.  I left with the sense that yes, she was marvelous, and yes, she was exacting, demanding, elegant - but also, I left with a new appreciation for living: doing what can be done and what must be done.  Surrounding your self with the people and things and ideas that you value.  Giving a little back whenever you can.  Being known for life...your own life and the lives you touch.

So, of course, because I am my father's daughter and because I am named for her, I am also thinking of Edna St. Vincent Millay - Dirge without Music - and how long it takes to begin to understand.

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned. 

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains, --- but the best is lost.

The answers quick & keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,
They are gone. They have gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

It is cold again this morning, after a warm weekend.  A meeting at 9 am.  Another at 11:00. The dog sleeps on the floor beside me.  On we go...

Love you,
Amanda



.