My Words for Mom

Since my mother's death on a beautiful warm July day, memories have poured through my mind especially when I am still. In the summer when the barriers between the indoor and outdoor worlds are opened the sounds of a summer's day carry memories of summers' past in to us. When we see death and we sense that a door is closing forever, is seems too, that another is opening. In these times of great mnemonic and emotional power, time ceases to be as we most often experience it in day to day life, linear, and becomes a spiral bringing precious memories vividly into our present.

My mother's death was as inevitable and gentle as leaf falling quietly, at last, from a tree. As a leaf will nourish new life in the spring, a person's life nourishes the world she leaves behind.

This church was my mother's other home, her other vocation and her friends have said much about her work and told anecdotes from her long membership here. One of the things that I most shared with her was her love of music, especially every kind of choral music and singing with the piano. One of my earliest memories is of sitting beside her on the piano bench one day when she'd brought home a new songbook and listening to her play and sing "Good Morning Merry Sunshine." I thought the chords and her voice were the most beautiful music I could imagine. Every Christmas we gathered around the piano to sing carols, a tradition that lives on in the family except for the piano. At Christmas time too, my mother and I made sure we each knew when the annual CBC performance of 'Messiah' would be broadcast.

My mother encouraged me early to join choirs and from public school on I sang in many, including the Junior and Senior choirs in this church, the Kingston Choral Society and an Irish choir. Mom came to every performance, usually dragging along her decidedly unmusical husband, Eric. At least, I can't remember one that she missed.

Once when I went to a downtown church to hear 'Elijah' and was sitting alone in the audience, she suddenly and unexpectedly appeared beside me to share the experience.

On another occasion when I mentioned on the phone that I was going with a friend to 'St. Matthew's Passion' sung in German, I was startled at her delighted reaction. "You have to have the score!" she exclaimed. "You'll enjoy it so much more!" Then she immediately drove across the city (Eric in tow) to bring me her own well-worn copy.

It was not until very recently that the diaries my mother kept from 1940 to 1947 were discovered during the move from Rideau Gardens to her final home at Villa Marconi. The entry for APRIL 20, 1943 reads in part: "Day of St. Matthew Passion - how I hurried home to get supper and bake a cake! M. & F. arrived shortly before six...we supped and departed for 'Passion.'" APRIL 21 - Breakfast and prayers with M. & F. Off to school in lots of time. Parts of 'Passion' in my head all day.' The music you came in by was from Bach's St. Matthew Passion.

Many of her diary entries of evenings at home or with friends end with, 'we sang and sang.' Often while visiting her parents in Delhi, she and her brother Wesley, fondly referred to as 'Wes' spent the evenings singing together and, as she put it, 'chattering and fooling.'

Many years ago, the 'Messengers,' the group for young children she helped to run, interviewed various church members, including mom. The only part I remember was her answer to "What is your favourite hymn?" She chose 'Day is Dying in the West.' She said it brought back profound memories of her childhood in China where she was born of missionary parents, of the times they sat outside of their house at sunset and sang this hymn.

Please turn to the back of your program and join in singing 'Day is Dying in the West' in memory of my mother, Evelyn Mary Henderson.

Hildegarde