Of things ‘closest to the heart’

 

Around twenty years ago a famous artist, now deceased, spoke with a fan over the phone. In my presence. In fact he used my phone to call her; so I wasn’t exactly eavesdropping.  I could only hear what he said.

‘Hello darling.’

‘Of course I remember your number. People my age only remember that which is closest to the heart.’

And he went on. For the record:

‘So when can we meet?’

‘Wednesday? Wednesday is a good day for romance.’

It is not hard to figure out what the other person said.  What stayed with me, though, is the observation about memory and proximity to the heart.  

A few years ago, a few months before she passed away at the age of 92, I was privileged to meet one Margaret Samararatne Nona Silva, the mother of a classmate, Priyankara. She was in the non-academic staff of Royal Junior School and everyone knew her as Margaret Anti (the Lankanized form of ‘Aunty’). We knew her as the lady who sorted things out if a boy in Grade One or Two wet his pants. Or worse.

She had lost her sight. She was hard of hearing. Her memory was sketchy. She couldn’t see us, i.e. her son, myself and a couple of others from our batch. She probably couldn’t hear us either. Priyankara said, in a loud voice obviously, ‘Amme, me Royal eke mage yaaluwo vagayak (Mother, these are some of my friends from Royal College).’

She raised her head immediately. She found her voice. She found passion. She said, ‘Raajakeeya vidyaalaya. Mama avurudu visi pahak hitiyaa!’ (Royal College. I was there for 25 years). Then she said, ‘thunuruwangema pihitayai’ (May you be blessed by the Noble Triple Gem).

A few weeks ago, my wife, a former student of St Joseph’s Convent (now ‘Balika’), recently showed a video of an old retired teacher: ‘Miss Charlotte.’ She is in her 90s and is apparently suffering from the typical issues related to cognitive ability and recollection. Someone had played the school song. Apparently Miss Charlotte had written the words. I am not sure who put music to the lyrics. It was a simple but moving video. The old lady sang along.

My artist friend, at the time, was not suffering from any of the infirmities mentioned above. He was being clever, I think. Flirtatious. It amused me. Indeed it amused him as well. We both laughed.

But he was right about ‘things closest to the heart,’ I now feel. At least that’s what the two examples mentioned above made me conclude.  

Things closest are things that have never left us or things we don’t allow to go away. Things we caress with tenderness or, indeed, things we grip on account of intense antipathy. Hatred, like love, is not easily discarded.  

There’s a Beatles song that comes to mind, ‘In my life.’

There are places I remember,
All my life, though some have changed,
Some forever, not for better,
Some have gone and some remain.

What remained for the Beatles as far as the lyricists, John Lennon and Paul McCartney were concerned, doesn’t have to be what stayed and stays for anyone else. They said, ‘…of all these friends and lovers, there is no one compares with you.’

Lennon was shot dead almost fifty years ago. I don’t know what McCartnes, now 83, remembers or rather holds on to now. It is reasonable to assume that it’s probably something close(st) to the heart.  

Is that what keeps the heart beating, I wonder. Is that what enables some kind of connection to life around us and life itself?

More than 25 years ago, my friend Anuruddha Karnasuriya, while traveling with me from Colombo to Kegalle, spoke about the last days of his mother, who had died of cancer a few years before. He said that she had lost consciousness, but she had balled her palm in the manner of a mother mixing rice for a child, and then stretched it out as though she was feeding one of her children. That to his was the saddest moment. He cried as he related the story. I did too.

My grandmother, even when she was over 90 years old, and would repeat herself over and over again, remembered a song she sang for a friend, someone around her age, when she was still a teenager. I would tease her about this ‘crush.’ She would blush and smile as she always did, all heart and nothing else, and say ‘aney, no…he was a very nice gentleman.’

‘So why didn’t anything come of it?’ I asked.

‘How could I? My father married me off to your grandfather!’

She laughed when she said this. She was over 90 years old. She never forgot the lyrics. She sang the song. And told the back story as well.  

I feel that if I live to be 90, if I succumb to dementia or Alzheimer’s, I will remember my grandmother, Kisa Gothami Herat, the elegant lady who I called ‘Amma’ simply because in my early years that’s what all the adults in that household including my mother, father and even my grandfather called her.

It’s hard to predict such things, but she is, most certainly among those who are closest to the heart or have been so for the longest time I can remember.  

[This article was published in the Daily News under the weekly column title 'The Recurrent Thursday']