They Still Miss Someone

Aside from reading the news obituaries, I usually always glance down at the In Memoriam section in the NYT.  I do this because I've placed ones there myself, and also to see how others are doing the same thing.

I forget when, but there's the annual one for Issac Stern, that announces, quite simply, FIDDLER. Issac Stern was the legendary violin player who many years ago also played a role in keeping Carnegie Hall from get whacked by the wrecking ball. The seating area in the Hall is named the Issac Stern Auditorium.

There's the one for Arthur Zankel, the protege of Sandy Weil, who committed suicide. The "basement" to Carnegie Hall is Zankel Hall, and it was his money and dedication that turned the old movie theater into a performing arts center.

Nearly all the In Memoriams are simple sentiments that proclaim that someone is still missed. Names and relationships are listed.

Occasionally, someone has a distinctive variation on the expressed loss. There was one in today's NYT that caught my eye.

BRENNAN--Eamon 1927-2010
Happy Birthday, Dad. Love,
Maev and the boys. Tempus
fugit, non autem memoria.

Brennan is my wife's maiden name, and the surname of nearly everyone who comes from Tubbercurry, Sligo county, Ireland. My wife's father came from Tubbercurry, and when his death notice was placed in the newspaper it attracted an elderly couple of mourners who stopped by to pay their respects. My wife's mother was not at that wake session, and they certainly didn't look familiar to me, and certainly didn't look familiar to my wife.

After the gentleman remarked how good Patrick Brennan looked (to this day, he was the best looking my wife and I have ever seen) he asked about Patrick's wife. My wife started to explain that she has trouble walking, and is saving herself for the evening session. This was met with a natural question by the elderly gentleman asking about what county she was from. My wife politely explained that her mother came from Liverpool. She was English. This was more than the old fellow bargained for, and he and his wife backed up and beat a slow and unsteady retreat.

We later of course realized that they were somewhat daily mourners who followed the death notices in the paper, and would appear kneeling at the casket when a countryman had expired. But a countrymen that married someone from England, well that nearly knocked them off.

Brennan is a common Irish name, and you don't have to be from Sligo to have the name. So no, Eamon was not known by wife.

And neither of us knew what the Latin sentiment was for Eamon, (Actually, initially, my wife thought parts of it were Gaelic. Oh boy.) beyond the "tempus fugit" part. (I can never hear the phrase without thinking of the silly riddle I learned when I was perhaps five about the guy who threw the clock out the window. Why? Because he wanted to see time fly.)

Well, with the marvels of the Internet, the whole phrase means "time flies, but not the memories."

For a dead language, Latin gets a lot of things right.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com