DIARY: Ruminations, Occasional thoughts & happenings - as they arise
Austin - Monday 26 September 2005
Death
sneaks up on you
- when you least expect it.
I was stunned last week to be told that my old pal Austin - Augustine Ryan Hanna
- had died.
It just never struck me that he would, despite the fact that he was 71, much the
same age as myself.
Weird that arithmetic does not register.
I knew that I could die, but not him!
This is a picture of Austin taken some 45 years ago, but I have
known him for longer than that, for about 58 years, since we grew up in West
Belfast.
When Austin and I were 21 we left Belfast, heading for
London - looking for something great.
I shall miss him, not that we lived in each
other's pockets, but that our relationship embodies, encapsulates, so many important things
that happened in my life, in both our lives I suppose.
Let me tell the story.
I
know before I start that it will be lengthy, not because I am garrulous but
because there is so much to tell. If you
care to proceed with my memoir please forgive an apparent loquacity. It's not often that
one's best friend dies, following intertwined experiences that have lasted so
long.
Austin and I grew up in Belfast,
away out at the end of the Falls Road, Andersonstown, at a time when whining
electric trams ran out as far as Fruithill Park, with only green fields and a
few houses beyond - where there are now thousands of dwellings.
It seems that Austin and I knew each other forever,
though it was only when we were teenagers that we
began to clatter into each others houses.
My brother Gerry informs me that our father used to say
that he didn't know who was misleading who! (Should that be whom? Ach t'hell
with such niceties!)
We left Belfast to investigate this big world that we inhabit, this
universe in fact, though we did not get as far as the moon or stars. It
merely seems that we did.
We were not going to London for work, or for the sake
of careers. We were just heading off into the unknown, the unexperienced, an
odyssey of exploration - inquisitive, interested, neither of us satisfied
with our jobs, Austin as a civil servant and me as an architectural apprentice.
I don't know exactly what was going on in Austin's mind
- except that he could not bear the thought of working in the Northern Ireland
Civil Service for the rest of his life - but I do know that in my case, when I was 16, I had had a
stand-up row with my Mum and Dad about my desire to go to sea as a navigating apprentice.
Secretly I was fearful about navigation mathematics, for I was a very poor
student, but my parents were more concerned about
safety, as well as the reality of my ambition, and when a captain cousin, Michael
Costello from Dublin, dropped anchor in our front sitting room and told tales of life aboard ship when he
had joined a windjammer in 1898, attitudes began to harden.. From my
parents' point of view the whole thing was settled!. My mother's
little boy was not going to be allowed to go to sea!
In a teenage fury that grew worse as the weeks passed I
eventually stormed out of the house declaring that they would see!
"See what?"
demanded my father when he caught up with me.
"I'll go to sea when I'm twenty-one," I
flared back.
The notion of going to sea appeared to have long passed from my mind
when I did achieve the then legal age of independence, but it must have been
residually there, for 12 months after Austin and I arrived in London this is exactly
what we did - headed off across the oceans aboard a merchant navy vessel.
I'm a bit out of kilter now, about how I should tell
this story, for my heart is a bit sore, and I find that I am quite emotional,
recalling events of half a century ago.
Let me start from the present time - last week - when my
good friend Chantal Hanna, née Vasseur, married to Austin's brother, Joe, emailed
me to let me know that Austin had died after Mass on Sunday 11th September.
I was greatly affected, despite the fact that I have
prepared myself for, confronted the unwelcome fact of death, including the death of
both parents, many aunts and uncles, my sister Margie and, worst of all - most of
all - the death of my infant son Tomás Ruaírí, his head crushed by the wheel of a milk
lorry at the age of a year and ten months. This gruesome death, 25 years ago,
almost killed me. I simply did not wish to live. We invest more of
ourselves than we know when we generate new life.
So I am accustomed to death. I thought I had it
all sussed; that I could endure anything, and I can, it seems, except when
death sneaks up, as it frequently does. We know not the day nor the hour,
but we tend to put it all on the back boiler, register horror at the slaughter
that takes place each day in Iraq, the Sudan, the Middle East, and in grotesque
murders here and there in our cities, and pray that we may be spared - and
then Austin dies - death slipping in unexpectedly, when I was not looking
....
I hate it! Death. It's
obnoxious.. It's an insult to life, a dreadful thing, totally
abhorrent. OK, billions of people die. I'm going to die. All my
family are going to die - but I don't like it! I simply cannot say, as
some do, "That's the way it is! We are like the leaves of a tree, falling
to the ground and dying, crumbling into mush and turning to dust!"
I can say it of course, but I can't
accept death without knowing Why? The full story. Inasmuch as it can be
known.
It was partly to seek answers to this type of question that
I went to London and
beyond, round the world - thinking about existence and questioning it in my own
primitive way. It was a journey of philosophical, theological and psychological investigation
as much as a physical exploration of the fantastic world that we
inhabit.
Austin had a faith that I did not have, and
it was this that added a leaven to our journeys and debates.
At the time I was concerned, in an interested, unbiased way,
how and why we all came to be.
I did not know if there was a God, a
Creator, and I was beginning in an untutored fashion to ask, "Is there a
God, and if there is why would he create a world which seemed to have gone to
pot, a world that I would not have created, with all this mystery,
suffering and death?" Big questions, you will agree!
I was unsure about everything, including the realty of the
Australian continent - until I set foot upon it in Freemantle..
Austin, on the other hand, had a Christian faith that was unshakable. He
would never have imposed it upon anyone, but it was there, mostly unspoken, and
could be expressed - and was, during many discussions as we gazed upon the
beauty of Mediterranean skies, the astounding desert that flanks the banks of the Suez
Canal, the amazing bare rock that is the vast Australian continent, the stupendous
engineering feat of the Panama Canal, the fascinating, minute speck
that is Pitcairn Island, the lovely land of New Zealand, the intoxicating magic of Dar-es-Salaam and
Mombassa on the coast of east Africa.
It was a mind boggling experience, one that I had never
imagined was possible - and the intellectual journey that took place in parallel
was equally staggering, primitive and unlearned though it was - from discussions
about causality: i.e. Is there a prime mover behind existence? Is there an
almighty Mind behind creation? Has the universe been created by a spontaneous,
unplanned Big Bang or is there a Creator involved? - and in psychology: was
human motivation entirely sexual, as proposed by Freud, or was the urge to power
the only motivation as claimed by Adler, or is there such a thing as the
universal subconscious, as Jung postulated?
I'm not saying that we agreed on the answers to these
questions, but we discussed them incessantly, usually at the end of the day's
work, after we had eaten and shared a bottle of wine in the cool of the
evening. And invariably our shipmates were drawn into each discussion,
each theme, as we rolled across the briny, to Australia, New Zealand and round
the African coast. It could be likened to a mini-university, spontaneous
and unpredictable - just as engrossing as the marvellous places of the world to
which we journeyed.
One discussion I remember vividly, on the way back from
Australia. We had been discussing the person of Jesus, some of the weird
things that he had said, like "Unless you eat of my flesh and drink of
my blood you will not have life within you," and "Unless
you are born again you will not enter into the kingdom," - and "I
am the way, the truth and the life," so that one of the crew, a young
Aussie carpenter working his passage to the UK, burst out, with a cry of anguish
that boiled up within him, "Who is this f****r
Jesus?" Trust an Australian to put the question so vividly! The eight
or so lads engaged in the discussion roared with laughter.
I suppose this was the most important question we continually
posed: "Is there a God and what is His relationship to Jesus?"
Fortunately, or through the grace of God, I began to get the
answer as we rolled through the vast Pacific, on the way back from New Zealand,
having just read Plato's "Symposium", a simple examination of the
nature of love.
Surrounded by the immensity of sky and
ocean, astounding at night under the great canopy of a sky lit by billions of
stars I found myself exclaiming, "My God! There is a God!"
Austin appeared to have had this intuitive gift of
realisation at some earlier stage in his life. His faith in God was firm.
So, when Chantal told me in her email that he had died after
receiving that mysterious Body of Christ at Sunday Mass on 11th of September, I
was devastated by the news, but somewhat comforted that he had been granted a
death that many Catholics would appreciate. Firm in his faith and full of
the life that Jesus came to share with us - His own Divine life.
Humanly speaking I was deeply saddened. We had shared
so much it was difficult to say farewell to such a valued friend.
Mabel, his beloved wife of 49 years, extended hospitality for
a few days when I arrived in South London for his funeral.
After an impressive celebration of the Eucharist in the
Church of the English Martyrs, Streatham, Austin's remains were buried in
Lambeth Cemetery, in the shadow of a few magnificent trees. Austin would
have liked the location, close to the wonders of nature that he had long loved,
for although he certainly loved God, through and in the Person of Christ, and
his neighbours, he also loved the beauty of this stupendous created world.
.
This is where his mortal remains are buried, waiting for the resurrection.
He would be well pleased, is well pleased, for he now knows in its
fullness the answers to those questions we so often asked.
One final thing. As Austin's funeral cortege moved
through the streets of South London I was impressed by the number of people who
paused on the pavement to make the sign of the cross. We may be tempted to
view modern generations as a people without faith. This is not my
experience. There is a deep need, a deep urge, to recognise that we are
not the cause of our own existence, that there is something much greater beyond
the visible world we inhabit. As Plato concluded in his Athenian discussion of
almost 2,500 years ago: all men believe that there is something called love, but
few men can agree as to what it is. I believe, and Austin believed,
that love is ultimately the love that is Yahweh - He Who Is
- the love that He has for us.
(See here and here
for interesting articles, and here
for e-Text of 'The Symposium'.)
I was particularly struck by the action of a young black lady
as the hearse passed by. Standing at a bus stop she raised her hand, palm
up, at waist level, motioned her farewell to a departed soul in a
succession of three upward movements, as if sprinkling water or launching a bird
- a physical ululation, a greeting that flowed out of the heart of Africa,
bidding a fellow human being god-speed into a greater way of Being. Very
moving. That lady, with grace flowing naturally from the essence of her being,
is certainly close to the heart of Jesus, whatever the nature of her
faith. She points towards something that we all desire - entry into the
kingdom of God.
Amen to my dear friend Austin. May he rest and live and
rejoice in the great world that lies beyond the physical. Now in perfect peace
and joy he waits for this world to be re-created, in due course of time.
May I, and all his family and friends, learn to live with the
same faith.
As that great English saint, Thomas More declared, somewhat
ironically, to those who were about to execute him "May we all meet
right merrily in Heaven". May all of us become similar faithful heroes.
In London, in 1956, Austin met Mabel Constance McGregor,
the daughter of a Scotsman and a Chinese Malayan lady. From the moment they met
Austin found it impossible to use the name Mabel. It simply did not
express the reality of such a beautiful girl. So Mabel became Chérie
- darling! Never anything else.
Their love was mutual and instantaneous. I can remember the flash
of his eyes as he rushed into the room we were sharing and said, "You
should see who I have met!"
In due course they generated four beautiful children, Austin's
Catholic faith causing convent educated Chérie to query the reason for
his actions and to be received into the Church. They were married and lived
together for 49 years.
I was a constant visitor, a single man warming my heart in
the familial love that Austin had found.
.
This - on the left - was Austin and
Chérie at the time, with daughter Dorcas (behind her Mum), Paul (on
Austin's knee), Colette (engrossed), and infant Niall.
I had the great privilege of being Paul's godfather. The
photo on the right, of Paul and Austin, is one that I took.
I even had the cheek to use Dorcas as a model in a brochure for a cardiograph made by the Cambridge Instrument Company, where I was a technical copywriter at that time .
The photograph was taken in St. George's Hospital, Hyde
Park, with Austin in attendance.
(I don't think Dorcas ever got a model's fee! Sorry about this Dorcas! I owe
you!)
On Thursday 22nd September Austin's remains were buried.
(It's hard to even write this. He will be so sorely missed.)
However, it had to be done, and all mourners gathered in Chérie and Austin's back garden, where we drank wine and ate delicious tidbits in beautiful sunshine.- a party to celebrate Austin's life!
Of course we were sad - but there were many stories about a great lad who had impacted upon and informed many people's lives .....
.... and we raised our glasses in honour of a man we all loved.
.... and then settled down to chat with each other ....
.... my dear
friend Chantal, married to Austin's brother Joe, with their
daughter Abigail, and Austin's sister Eilis ...
(I'm rather proud of the fact that I introduced Chantal
and Joe!)
... Dorcas with her husband John Seeler and their twin sons Sam
and Tomas - both now sweating through 'A' levels.....
....Colette and
her beautiful
little daughter Isabella ......
I missed a photo of her even smaller son Jamie
- he buzzed around so fast - and also husband James Dow.
Would have also liked to have met Colette's daughter Cailen again, but
she was busy about essential Fresher business, logging into her university and
could not be there.
(I was tickled to see that Austin had labelled the driveway to his house "Isabella Avenue". No doubt where his heart lay.)
.... and then there was Mabel
- Chérie - still beautiful though in her late sixties ......... and
Austin's sister Mary, a great woman, mother of nine children, who went to
London and took a Degree halfway through raring her childer! She now lives
in Bangor, County Down.
Austin's other sisters, Dominica, in Australia, and Julia, in America, were
missed by all.
It was a great party. Austin would have loved to have been there, but I
am pretty certain that, now sharing in God's knowledge, he knew exactly what was
going on, and that we still love him.
Next day my Godson Paul called round and took me on a brief tour through the centre of London, well, just down to Westminster Cathedral, where I spent many hours when I lived and worked in London - working just up the road in Buckingham Palace Road and studying theology in the little schoolhouse at the side of the Cathedral.
Paul had the bright idea of asking a young couple to take photos of both of us, to record the visit ....
Next day, in brilliant sunshine, Paul and his lady love Arlene - who, I had been amazed to learn, had been together for twenty years - created a great al fresco lunch, and Colette turned up later in the afternoon to give me a lift to Balham Station.
Austin's wife and children gave me such a warm welcome. It was almost as if I had never left London
From Stanstead Airport I texted Paul:
Booked in for flight. Enough time to have a shower,
write a novel and make love - but will be content to have a meal, wine &
cognac.
Very many thanks for marvellous hospitality by all Hannas & those
who love them
- WITH love, Mick.
and later
I leave in good heart despite dreadful loss of best
friend.
I shed a tear but am not without hope.