Forgotten

In the OR today I happened to notice a sign addressed to the nursing staff. It was a sign explaining a new cross-check system called “forget me notes.” Essentially it was a system of notes that needed to be written at various peri-operative stages to assure nothing was forgotten.

Of course, this is a play on the flowers Forget-me-nots – the small, lovely, baby blue flowers. Googling the flowers I learned that German legend has it that while God was naming all the plants of the earth, a small patch of unnamed ones cried out “forget me not, dear Lord!” – and so that was what He named them.

There is something so terrible about the prospect of being forgotten. Really, what’s worse than thinking someone is remembering you – loving you, taking care of you – and realizing that, in every way, you’ve been forsaken?

When I think of flowers I instantly think of my mother, who has spent many years doing floral arrangements in churches and cathedrals all over the east coast. Decorate God’s house before your own, she’d say, as she’d sketch designs or plan a budget on the kitchen table. She’s decorated the churches for our family’s weddings and funerals for years.

She got her start in the National Cathedral, where I was a boy chorister growing up. Someone recently asked my to describe some of my favorite moments singing in that awesome space. And while there were many, I recall with special fondness the literal transformative process that we underwent while preparing a “Te Deum Laudamus” by Herbert Howells. The piece is sensational – big, gutsy, with pure emotion on every page. And it is unique for the high C in the last stanza – the highest note I ever sang, and the highest I’ve ever seen written for a soprano. When you see something like that – that unusual, that difficult – you have to pay attention the words in the music. Howells was too smart to make something like that happen for an insignificant phrase. The high C comes on the word “never” during the phrase “O Lord, in thee have I trusted; let me never be confounded.”

The sentiment of trusting in the lord and never bring confounded comes from Psalm 31. Different translations ask to never be put to shame, or to never be disgraced, or to never be defeated. I guess if I was translating today, I might try to use “to never be forgotten.”

Hell, look at me – I’m terrified of being forgotten. I’m so terrified that I write this blog so that I’ll feel like my emotions and thoughts will somehow reach one of you, and that you might think of me for a moment longer than you might otherwise today. That, for me, is a perverted form of self-preservation. It’s my way of making you not forget me.

There are lots of things we do, really, to make sure we’re not forgotten. We do some things to assure our legacy after we’re dead and buried – have children, pass on a family name, make a donation in our name. And there are things we do to make sure we don’t get forgotten in this lifetime, in the hectic haze of a crazy, crazy world. Exchanging and wearing wedding rings comes to mind as a way to prevent being forsaken.

But I guess at the end of the day we can do only so much – we can’t force our legacy on one another. Someone has to choose to remember us.

Thank you all for reading.