This week provided an unexpected ‘trip down memory lane’, as the saying goes. The impetus had been another concert. This time, The Stranglers. On the road for over 50 years they were musically excellent, with a great light show and yes, loud.
Thankfully, already having some tinnitus myself, I was left with just a gentle ringing of the ears rather than the bruised eardrums of heavy metal heavies, Motorhead and Saxon who I saw in the same venue in the 1980s. Taking place at the Bristol Beacon, being there this week brought back memories of many a concert I went to in that decade in what was then the Colston Hall.
On my way I had called in to the town of Nailsea, where I lived as a teenager and where both my parents are buried. Going to lay flowers for both, visiting my Mum’s grave doesn’t get easier as the years go by. I stand there and have a chat. And it’s very hard to leave. Memories of who she was and who she didn’t meet or things she didn’t see. Next year it’ll be 50 years since her death and I don’t expect it to be any easier then.
Having been suitably entertained, I began the nighttime journey home. Taking a wrong turn I found myself on the road which went through Backwell, passing the school I was at and the park where many a school lunchtime was spent in the months after Mum’s death trying to make sense of it all.
A song of the current period, ‘Rein me in’ by Sam Fender and Olivia Dean, contains the wonderfully perceptive line: ‘All my memories of you ring like tinnitus’.
We all have different memories. Some good, some not so. Some linger in our mind like tinnitus ringing in our ears. They can shape the way we are and how we respond and behave.
Memories are peculiar things: a memory of an event or person can transfer itself to another event or person even though they are totally unconnected. If we have been bullied in the past, we might live expecting it to happen again, for example. If we have particular positive memories we might strive to experience those feelings once more. Some live totally in the memories of their past, rather than the experiences of the present (and perhaps missing out on creating new memories).
At this time of year, we remember those we have lost both personally at All Saints and All Soul’s and globally on Remembrance Day.
There is, I believe, a place for the healing of memories – not just through talking to someone or counselling and the like, but through bringing God in to every moment, every word, every action of a memory. It’s a time of year to reflect on our own memories, to gently re-live them and to do just that.
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