Scottish Catholic Observer

I’ve mentioned before that, despite the best efforts of my glamorous assistants, there is always a bit of a mess on and around my desk.

Today, it looks particularly bad since, at the prompting of the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) compliance drive, we have been invited to dump a lot of our old files and documents. The diocese has kindly arranged to come and pick up the old stuff and have it securely destroyed. I was a bit hurt to find my ‘sermons’ folder had been earmarked for the shredder by a (now) former housekeeper.

It is remarkable, though, how much clutter accumulates in filing cabinets in chapel houses. Scrupulosity is often a habit of the clergy, and there is that bit of deeply ingrained anxiety which tends to fret about the consequences of not being able to produce your TV licence from 1992 or lay your hand on the Mass attendance figures over the past 40 years.

So, although the advent GDPR prompted a bit of ‘millennium bug’ frenzy in the Church, it has also brought the unexpected boon of disposing of reams of documents which have long exceeded their useful lifespan.

I must confess that I did feel quite emancipated as I chucked fire extinguisher service reports on the ‘to be shredded’ pile. I may not have been tossing my support garments on the pyre, but I did feel lighter and freer as a consequence.

I am a bit of a hoarder, though. They say you should keep your old love letters and throw away your old bank statements, but that doesn’t work if you have none of the former and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs take a keen interest in the latter.

The closest thing I have to love letters are ‘Thank You’ cards. I’ve been in the habit of keeping these since my first ever posting to Clarkston in the mid-1990s. While it would be a foolish priest who lived for praise, we love getting a boost from time to time: this is especially true if someone takes the trouble to write more than a few words to express how you have helped them or what you have meant to them.

My justification for lugging these boxes of Hallmark memories around with me is perhaps best expressed by a line from Brideshead Revisited I recall from my youth.

The foppish young aristocrat Sebastian Flyte captures something of my own philosophy when he says: “I should like to bury something precious in every place where I’ve been happy and then, when I’m old and ugly and miserable, I could come back and dig it up and remember.”

I suppose that, on some level, these cards and notes have become something of an insurance policy against the incursions of age, ugliness and misery. When I’m sad and feeling forgotten, or annoyed or put upon, I can open up a box of past affirmations and bask in their glow for a while.

No doubt a saint (or a psychologist, for that matter) would point out that these are not nuggets of buried gold but hefty treasure chests being carted around from place to place: thus far, they have been in six flittings. They might also point out that an appreciation of a deed done in the past is precisely that—a done deed, a thing of yesterday, not today.

Remembering an ‘old life’ can, of course, be an impediment to living fully in the present. The lure of nostalgia grows as we get older, but not necessarily wiser. If I had a bit more courage, I might well tip the content of these memory boxes into the bin bags destined for oblivion: a veritable bonfire of the vanities on Bow Road. But I’m not that brave, not yet. As soon as I open one up, I get distracted by the whiff of the past which, far from having a tang of must, seems to have a discernible fragrance about it.

I suppose one of the reasons that memory has loomed large in my mind of late is that last week I finally got round to attending the ‘Dementia Friend’ training offered by Alzheimer Scotland.

Perhaps ‘training’ isn’t the right word to use, since it’s more about raising awareness and understanding than imparting skills. But I learned a lot, I must say.

I’m fairly au fait with a lot of the technical stuff about the causes of dementia, but this session opened my eyes to a lot of the practical and emotional aspects of the condition. I’ll give you an example: on more than one occasion I’ve heard someone with dementia asking for their (long dead) mother.

My assumption had been that this was simply a symptom of a loss of memory: they had forgotten that their mum had died some years ago. What I learned from my session last week is that asking for your mum is sometimes the only way a person has of articulating a need for reassurance in a situation they find strange and confusing.

A further concrete example was given by Sean, who lead the session: say you’re a person who has always been independent and in charge of your own resources. One day you find yourself at a table and people are bringing you food (the fact that you live there doesn’t always register).

Now, you have a schema for dealing with that sort of situation. You know that if you’re in a restaurant and someone is bringing you food, so then you have to pay for it. But you have no money on you. So, rather than enjoy the food, such a person might be preoccupied with the matter of finding money.

Sometimes, the only way that anxiety can find expression is through that most deeply ingrained lifeline: your mum. ‘Mum,’ in this instance, represents a constellation of fear-assuaging responses, a request for reassurance that everything is OK.

Although we often think the cruellest part of the condition is the erosion of memory, no less painful is the way it can rob people of the language they relied upon to express their feelings, especially their love, their hopes, their fears.

What is said, therefore, can actually be a sort of ‘code’ for something quite different. Then again, my family and friends would argue that I’ve been doing that for years.

While mum’s often the word, this Sunday it’s dad who gets the attention, as Father’s Day rolls around once again.

In my box of delights are also a few Father’s Day cards, as kind parishioners have sometimes used this as a way of celebrating my spiritual paternity. More recently, Jasmine has taken to getting me a Father’s Day card, which is very thoughtful of her. I’m not sure where she gets the money: I hope she hasn’t been dipping her paw in the petty cash tin.

She’s actually a little bit off with me today, as I had her to administer her ‘spot on’ lice and tick treatment. As she loves charging through the undergrowth at great speed, she’s forever picking up ticks and is far from cooperative when it comes to removing the blighters.

In fact, no sooner had I managed to apply the lotion between her shoulder blades than she was out rubbing her back on the grass in act of blatant daddy defiance. No amount of reasoning on my part will convince her that a few drops of oily residue on the fur is better than a blood-sucking parasite.

But I guess that’s one of the joys of parenthood: your kids don’t always believe that you have their best interests at heart, especially when you are making them do something they don’t like. But, with the passing of time, comes the gift of perspective and, hopefully, gratitude.

Even if we don’t give our dads (and mums) cards to keep in their own treasure chests, we should always let them know we’re thankful for everything they do—and have done—for us.

And, yes, despite the times we were ‘ticked’ off with them!