YESTERDAY
Hanns F Skoutajan
“Senescence,” the dictionary tells me, is “the condition or process of deterioration with old age.” Why did I have to look it up when I have some very personal acquaintance with that condition, such as my forgetfulness? As I write, but more embarrassingly when speaking, the right word escapes me and leaves me groping.
There is another condition that manifests itself with the advancing years. I call it “anecdotage.” While the right word or expression flees my stories, especially reminiscences, only too readily come to the fore. I vividly recall events from the past. Indeed, many of my Spirit Quests are loaded with those reflection on bygone times.
I have always enjoyed the stories of Mary Cook in which she describes life in rural Renfrew County. Having ministered in that area of eastern Ontario for five years I have some appreciation of the setting. They used to be published in the local paper, alas no more.
There is also some wishful thinking that colours these stories that turn them out to be rosier than in their reality. Thus memories of my childhood on that farm in remote northern Saskatchewan lose the despair and hardship that were a daily fact of our life. I cherish the memories of my dogs as I described it in a recent SQ, of Blacky, the placid horse on which I learned to ride, the pigs we named after Nazi leaders that we had managed to escape.
I remember the newsboy in Prague with his bundle of papers under his arm brandishing the latest copy calling out “Halo Novini! and with a loud voice proclaiming the unhappy headlines of the day. In the fall of 1938 they were unfortunately plentiful.
My parents and I had managed to escape the Nazi invasion of our hometown. We were forced to exchange our comfortable apartment for an attic with other refugees. We slept on straw mattresses and went for our meals to a soup kitchen set up for the many who had flooded into this still free city. I often wonder what became of that news vendor or those who stood in line with us at the kitchen window. We were among the fortunates who were helped by conscientious Brits to make it out of the caldron of central Europe. True, on coming to this land we were faced with hard and unfamiliar work and lived in unbelievable hovels that were minus the most basic of amenities.
Having struggled with learning disabilities had made my education process a bit of drag. In those days there were no learning disabilities, you were either smart or dumb. Guess what! I was forced to work very hard and was deprived of those times that are meant to be so much a part of college life. I have a better recollection from the distance of years. Queen’s University is one of the highlights of my life and I felt greatly honoured to have an honourary doctorate bestowed on me by my alma mater.
I also remember fondly the congregations that I served as minister and the people with whom I worked and worshipped and came to know quite intimately.
Those times are not forgotten but form the matrix of 84 years of my life. What I am today is made up or at least enhanced by the memory of those events of long ago. I wonder what my own children will remember of their childhood and youth. What funny stories will they tell of their father years hence.
I spend much time at the local coffee shop with other octogenarians and some much younger than I exchanging our tales of life. I know that there are some who would rather forget the past and live in the now. I pity them for the wealth of the now is constituted by the events of long ago.
I have called it “Spirit Quest,” the opening of the mind to the past that made us what we are, to discover that there is a Spirit that has accompanied us on our way and still is with us now.
01/ O8/ 2013
