My grandfather died today.\u00a0 He was 91, and had actually been doing very well for someone who had an awful lot of very dodgy organs for some time, beating all comers at chequers and scopa and apparently being something of a social center at the nursing home where he has been since March.\u00a0 He’d only really been sick for a few days – and it was only yesterday when it started to look serious.\u00a0 We found out this morning that everything was failing and it was only a matter of time, and mum rang at around 10:30, while I was in an all-Institute meeting, to say that he was unconscious and she was heading down to the LaTrobe Valley (2 hours away) to say goodbye.<\/p>\n
Only at 11:00, I had to conduct our much-advertised and anticipated final work choir performance.\u00a0 We even had a harp to accompany us.\u00a0 This did not seem like something I could cancel at the last minute.\u00a0 Also, I needed to get my head around what was going on, and a choir break seemed like the way to go.<\/p>\n
So I went down and conducted and sang, which was unbelievably surreal, because we were actually doing really well and even had fancy things like dynamics, and sometimes I was fully in the music, but mostly I was either encouraging different parts or\u00a0 calculating all the things I\u00a0had to do this week and working out which ones I\u00a0could drop and whether I\u00a0could get down there today or tomorrow and how I\u00a0was going to get everything done and who I\u00a0could give various tasks to.<\/p>\n
We sing Silent Night in five languages, including Italian, and the Italian version made me think of Nonno, so we sang it twice.\u00a0 And we sang, too, a piece that isn’t strictly a Christmas carol, but seems appropriate to this or any season – Dona Nobis Pacem.\u00a0 And I\u00a0have to say, we have never sung it so well.\u00a0 So we did that one twice, too.<\/p>\n
And then I\u00a0gave everyone cake, thanked them, and ran upstairs to send a flurry of emails delegating everything in sight and to let my bosses know that I was off to Morwell.\u00a0 And about half an hour after I got there, Nonno quietly stopped breathing.<\/p>\n
So that was that.\u00a0 I’m not feeling especially Adventish today, but if Dona Nobis is good enough for my choir, it’s good enough for this Advent Calendar.\u00a0 The only flaw in this version is that she stops after the very first time you get three parts – I wanted it to keep going for a lot longer.<\/p>\n
[youtube https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=4K8B1YEi_wQ&w=560&h=315]<\/p>\n
(oh, and there was one moment of humour in the afternoon, when we were discussing whether Nonno should be buried wearing his wedding ring.\u00a0 “He’d better be,” said one of my aunts.\u00a0 “Mum will be really annoyed if he gets there and he’s lost another one!”.\u00a0 Apparently, Nonno went through three or four rings during his marriage, and Nonna used to get understandably upset with him for losing them!)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My grandfather died today.\u00a0 He was 91, and had actually been doing very well for someone who had an awful lot of very dodgy organs for some time, beating all comers at chequers and scopa and apparently being something of a social center at the nursing home where he has been since March.\u00a0 He’d only […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[14,193,211],"class_list":["post-821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-advent-calendar","tag-dona-nobis-pacem","tag-elisabeth-von-trapp"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/catesings.catespeaks.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/catesings.catespeaks.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/catesings.catespeaks.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catesings.catespeaks.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catesings.catespeaks.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/catesings.catespeaks.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/catesings.catespeaks.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catesings.catespeaks.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catesings.catespeaks.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}