I’ve decided to choose this lovely photograph of my uncle Roland and aunt Nora on their wedding day in 1960, so that people reading this can remember how happy they were during the many years of their marriage, which lasted 55 years before Roland died in January 2016.

Sadly, however, they lost their much loved son Justin in April 2009, and things were never the same again for the two of them. 

I am doing my best to remember the happy Nora, whom I was delighted to get to know back in the late 1950s, when I used to spend the odd weekend with my uncle during my years at Cambridge.  Unfortunately, when Jane and I (just back from a holiday in Egypt) went to see Nora in hospital, she turned on me, accusing me of a whole series of misdeeds, from speaking rudely on the phone to one of the nurses, to going around boasting of my being Nora’s next of kin and I don’t know what.  And that, I’m sad to say, was the last time I saw her.

At the Celebration for her life, held at Mortlake Crematorium on the 26th of March, Father John spoke movingly of the Nora that he, too, had known for many years and urged us to disregard how she had acted in the final weeks, when sad and suffering.

The most moving part of this event was when we listened to a recording of Roland playing on the organ what was described in the brochure as ‘a traditional Welsh Hymn’.   In fact, it was his version of ‘Silent Worship’, a baroque aria written by Handel, with Italian words, and originally known as ‘No lo diro col labbra’.  

This tune is important in my life for the following reason: one year, when visiting my mother Laura in Miami - already in her early 90s - I went to see her at the day centre she attended twice a week, and where she was much loved.  One of the two amazing women who ran the centre suggested it would be a good time to have a little chat about what Laura would like to happen after her death. Would she like a religious service? (No, nothing religious). But what about a get together for family and friends to celebrate her life? (Yes, that would be lovely).

And so it went on, my mother choosing two pieces of verse: a section from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, and a poem by Emily Dickinson.  And what about some music? ‘Oh’, said my mother, ‘What was that lovely piece that Roland liked playing. Michael?’ ‘Silent Worship’, I said, adding that I had a CD of Roland playing it. Which, indeed, I took over, two years later, a few weeks after my mother died, the night after St Valentine’s Day, having danced at the day centre with an elegant elderly Cuban guy, leaving the centre with a rose they had given her, saying ‘See you Thursday’, heading back to her care room, putting the rose in a vase by her bed, falling gently asleep and not waking up.

It’s a shame that Nora couldn’t have gone like that, but - as I say - we are all doing our best to remember the many, many happy years earlier in her life.

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Click to read what I wrote earlier

about Justin

and about Roland

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By an amazing coincidence, last week I saw on television, for the first time, the excellent 1996 film of Jane Austen’s ‘Emma’, in which Jane Fairfax (using the piano that an unknown person has given her) plays and sings ‘Silent Worship’, with Frank Churchill joining in (nobody knowing that they are secretly engaged).

Here are the words. Go to YouTube to listen to it

Did you not hear my Lady go down the garden singing,

Blackbird and thrush were silent, to hear the alleys ringing.

Oh, saw you not my Lady, out in the garden there,

Shaming the rose and lily, for she is twice as fair.

Though I am nothing to her, though she must rarely look at me,

Though I could never woo her, I’ll love her till I die.

Surely you heard my Lady go down the garden singing,

Silencing all the songbirds and setting the alleys ringing.

But surely you see my Lady, out in the garden there,

Rivalling the glitt’ring sunshine, with the glory of golden hair.