When the Titanic sank, it was accompanied by the strains of the orchestra playing Nearer My God to Thee. The music calmed survivors and doomed alike. Maybe the musicians thought there would be enough lifeboats to get away at the last minute. They clearly felt an obligation to provide art as a bromide for the fear of imminent catastrophe.
Once the damage was all sorted out, the musician’s families received bills from the ship’s booking agency for the tuxedos that went down with the ship. Come hell or high water, they would collect what was owed them. Business as usual.
Agapanthus always seem too big for the vase at the cemetery. So I
bring something smaller, something that doesn’t grow in the yard.
Samuel’s life was brief. Before he died, he held my finger. Breathing through a respirator, breathing through pain, breathing away the last hours of his life; he loosened his grip. The tight fists that fought to stay alive loosened so his cold hand held my finger once before he passed.
I’m glad we had that contact, just like I’m glad to be part of my two son’s lives. Still, I sometimes wonder who Samuel might have become.
Word Ladder, Death and Taxes, will continue next week.
We left Paris on Easter of 2015, after ten days of being tourists.
Though we hadn’t intended to, we witnessed the veneration of relics
from the passion of Christ ̶
the crown of thorns, a piece of wood and a nail from the cross ̶
at Notre Dame Cathedral. This is how that happened. My husband and I
were standing in an apse, whispering about how difficult it would be
for photo recognition software to distinguish between the apostles
pictured in the stained glass ̶
their faces are virtually the same ̶
when a deacon indicated we should move and shushed us with a finger
to the lip. A little puzzled, we complied. Looking around, we saw a
procession moving along the aisle. A priest (most likely the bishop)
held aloft a reliquary containing the glinting gold crown. Assistants
on either side held the other relics. For about twenty minutes, they
moved slowly through the church as people crossed themselves and
bowed their heads.
It is this scene that came to mind when I heard on the radio a few
days ago that Notre Dame was burning. My first thought was to hope
that it was not the result of a terrorist attack. Following the story
in the news during the next few days, I was relieved to hear that the
fire was accidental. As information has come in, it seems that
someone miscalculated. Things got out of control. Often they do. This
might be true for political conflagrations as well. If so, let’s hope
that we can get those under control and that a respect for the
accomplishments of the past can rescue the future. Notre Dame has
been rescued and rebuilt several times.
The Easter Week commemorations for Good Friday and Holy Saturday
will be held at Sainte Sulpice and Easter Mass will be celebrated at
Sainte Eustache. Sunday organ concerts are held each week at Sainte
Sulpice, though I’ve never been. The organ at Sainte Eustache is is
quite powerful. I’ve heard it. The seating is spartan, consisting of
folding chairs. But this is true of most churches we visited in
Paris.
The organ at Notre Dame was spared from fire by a stone roof. When we were there in 2015, a sign was posted on a collection box requesting donations to make a few repairs to that organ. Perhaps now that people have opened their pocketbooks to rebuild the cathedral, the organ can be restored completely. This is how things progress, in fits and starts, forwards and backwards, with a crisis often required to concentrate the mind.
