One rainy night recently I lost my keys. I dropped them as I ran for a bus in Brixton and didn’t notice until, almost on the doorstep, I felt for them in my pocket and they were gone. I was very upset.
My keyring has among its many links a piece of bike chain, coins with holes in from Spain and Denmark, a brass ring and another, tiny ring too small to be useful. They speak to me, these small things, of my sister; of my friends Ant in Exeter and Anna in New Zealand; of being conned in New Cross; of being a scout in America when I was 15.
The sadness of losing my keys, therefore, had nothing to do with my keys and everything to do with everything else, a chain binding me to my past, suddenly severed.
Three weeks ago, I felt another chain snap, more viscerally, when my Father died.
My dad was a good man. I have aspired and failed to be like him, but I was loved by him anyway, and as a result my life was always safe.
Today, though, I find myself unmoored and adrift and frankly frightened.
I am not unique in my loss. We all lose the people we love. I am not unique, but I am angry and I find myself asking, like the writer of Psalm 77 in the Bible,
Has God’s steadfast love ceased for ever? Has he in anger shut up his compassion?
Psalm 77, v.9
Some days, I think the answer is ‘no, he has not’. Others, I’m honestly not so sure. However, the Psalmist goes on to say this:
I will remember the deeds of the Lord; I will remember your wonders of old.
Psalm 77, v.11
Now I can’t pretend to remember God’s deeds with any great fondness just now. But the business of remembering Dad is different. Memory, even untethered from his presence, helps me tie myself back in to him. I remember his wonders of old.
After I lost my keys, I returned to Brixton where I ran for the bus, and there they were, lying unregarded under a hedge.
I can’t go back and find Dad. He wouldn’t be in Brixton, anyway. But I can remember his wonders of old and they keep him by me.
And I reckon that maybe, eventually, when I’m feeling a little more forgiving, they might help me keep God by me too.
My Father, Robin Harris, died on February 11th 2020. He lived 81 excellent years, 55 of them as my Dad.
In the picture we are at Lord’s as England are getting thumped by Australia in July 2015. It was a happy place to be together, for forty-odd years, whatever the state of the game.