The Catholic priest spoke of the 91-year old woman at her funeral service as coming from a different time and from circumstances not comparable to those of the late 20th and early 21st centuries It was a time when the lower and middle social and economic classes had little by way of material possessions, that is in the manner that we today count value. But it was a time when we reached beyond our base nature and valued the non-material.
It was a time when people paid attention to something called "good manners", which meant they said "morning neighbour." It was a time, contrary to the times of today, when as 3Canal observes, we have drifted far away from simple but fundamental tenets of humanity:
"Something gone wrong like every thing upside down, like hustle and bustle like everybody caught in the tussle all in the attempt to get a better living we forget to say Good Morning..." There were no air-conditioned buses then, but people did what they had to do nonetheless, observed the priest. It was a time when the large mass of the population walked long distances, a reality forced upon our parents by the financial realities of the times. I remember travelling in the trolley bus with its long feeler-like antennae attached to the overhead lines, the fare must have been a fat penny; my mother would spare no more than that to save her children the exertions.
As the priest remembered, without a lot of material possessions, people lived in peace and harmony, love really, a value not easily understood, far less achieved in the times of the present when everyone is seeking to put one over on the other, or to gun you down for even looking to hard at them. The 91-year old mother of one, but surrogate mother to hundreds based on all that was said in that small but loving gathering at the funeral service at the Catholic church on the Western Main Road, close to what my generation called the "Poor House." She, and I don't give her name at this point, may do so later or not at all, because while this column was triggered by her, the funeral service and the loving nature of the small gathering, I interpret her life and times as being reflective of an age, a civilisation long gone, perhaps never to return. She spent her time here inculcating in generations of children the virtues of being god-fearing, obedient, truthful, having concern for others, while being disciplined in their own lives. I never met the lady but know her son who would have been her most appropriate vessel into which she could pour the great virtues of her life and experiences.
He demonstrated the love and compassion she passed on to him on the morning when he said a tearful, at times visible, but all the time inside, word of love about his mother. In his wife, his mother acquired "the daughter she never had," said the son. His daughter spoke about how her grandmother loved her, cooked stew chicken and macaroni pie and tended her wounds when she would fall and bruise her knees. I could tell on that morning last week there were those amongst the small congregation with moist eyes, mine were. Why? Because those of us old enough to remember growing up in the late 1950s and the 1960s recognised many of the virtues and how our own parents strove with little material possessions to teach us the importance of what truly mattered. We learnt the virtue of being respectful to elders, placing value and respect on the property of others, the importance of diligence and integrity.??
For many of us, we may have been stubborn and non-understanding at the time, as young people are wont. However, the seeds were planted and they blossomed later in life at an age of greater maturity. Technology and information dominate our age, but appreciation for the better things in life, possessions not purchased with the credit card, as the advertisement encourages, is not now within our grasp. Ella Andall sings of a "Missing Generation." It is a warning that we shall wake up one morning and find the generation gone: "Who Cares" asks Ella.
Well, we have all got to care as we are losing fast our humanity, grabbed from us by acquisitiveness, by greed, by ruthless and soulless materialism; by jealousy, by rage.
The media report stories almost weekly of young men taking the lives of others, and those who would not submit easily to their vengeful and violent bullying for pennies. Indeed, lives are often taken without financial reward in the offing, just for plain old ignorance. Fixing the economy, detoxifying the politics, retrieving the country from its most violent moment in history, cannot be achieved without the input of the children and grandchildren of women such as the 91-year old woman–sometimes we have to wonder where the men disappeared to. She has gone on for her reward, but has left behind the principles, the humanity she acquired from those who went before her. I could not wait until the end of the service, there went I hustling, not being able to go beyond saying "Good Morning;" but I got enough to take me through the day and to keep it in mind to ease today's column away from the maddening times in which we live and have our being.
But columns like these do not come easily; they take courage to put on the road in the face the all-consuming political contentions and counters, the state of the economy, criminality threatening to engulf us all and on and on.?I have persevered with the column because we as a people have a golden tradition, we ent fall from no breadfruit tree, we are not without a rich past of quality living and interaction. As a result we are not irretrievably over the brink, beyond redemption; we never are if the truth be told. But we need to return to those social values which 91-year old Emelda Pereira left behind for all of us.
