13/01/2010

(Kirstin Amy Mackrill 13-01-1990 to 5-07-2008 - pencil drawing by Kendal Kluge)

A few days ago, I heard something that reminded me of Dana Niehaus. He was a presenter on the morning show on what was then called Springbok Radio, many years ago. I googled his name but couldn't find any real info on him. Springbok Radio fell silent on 31 December 1985. There is a society that preserves the station archives and it is apparent that many people still look back on that popular station nostalgically. Even as a teenager, I remember listening to the station on my mom's old black radio that used to stand on the kitchen counter in Sprigg Road. My dad had given it to her on our first real family holiday in Oudtshoorn. When the station went off the air, Kirstin wasn't even born. And now she is gone. In the blink of an eye. She would have turned 20 today and been in the second year of her degree in Journalism at Stellenbosch University.

That we can only live life forwards is the obvious mercenary reality that is life. I do try not to look back too often and reminisce about the good old days because I am always conscious that as Benjamin Franklin prophetically put it: The golden age never was the present age. But. As much as our past is part of us in the sense it has shaped who we have become, so I would also submit to you that it contains many of the seeds for who we not only will be but even want to be. And all those we have lost are part of that. I had life before Kirstin and I still live. My memories of her are still vivid and stark. My love for her calls me to remember her and create future memories worthy of nostalgia. But she doesn't live in my memory. She lived as fiercely differently from me as any other person can and she lives now in the light of eternal life. My memories of her are part of the residue of her earthly life - no more accurate or important than the old photographs of her in an album or hard drive. I wish she will never be forgotten but she will. When I tried to tell her about Springbok radio, she could appreciate my affection, (ok, she rolled her eyes!) but could never share it. When I talk about her, people may sense by the way that I talk about her, how much I loved her, but again they cannot share that experience of her, anymore than I can share knowledge of their loved ones - even though I can see and sense their love. And so at the end of the day all that remains to be seen of our lives is love. And that, I like to think, is almost like a prism where we, after we are gone, are merely reflecting back to those we leave behind the light of Love of the One in whose presence we then live.

‘Soon we shall die and all memory of those (we have loved) will have left the earth. We ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough….. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead, and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.’ (T Wilder:'The Bridge of San Louis Rey')