In the beginning was the word

Letters, I used to get tons of them.

Nowadays it’s emails, texts, messages and a zillion electronic missives. Emails I dig, they being more or less instant, and certainly quicker than postal mail. Texts I tolerate, bridling at having to type with one finger on the tiny phone ‘keyboard’. I never tweet, or is it x these days? I neither know nor care. I ‘message’ now and then on Facebook, mainly in answer to those that have ‘messaged’ me. My daughter uses a thing called Whatsap, and of course, there are, as I just said, a zillion other methods … platforms as they are termed in the current vernacular.

These thoughts came to mind because my dear wife Britt was in the hospital yesterday having her appendix removed. She arrived there at 8am, and was home by 4pm. I seem to remember that years ago this operation took quite a bit longer, and certainly involved - let’s be blunt here as far as scalpel usage goes - a great deal more cutting. While the surgeon was not able to remove the appendix by cyber means alone, there is no doubt that increased technology played a very large part in both speeding up the process and minimizing invasive surgery.

She was unconscious for no more than two or three hours, but long enough to remind me of a time when my father was unconscious, in hospital, following a very serious car accident in 1972. He was in a coma for over four weeks. While waiting for the promised phone call from the doctor operating on Britt that would - hopefully - inform me of the completion of a successful operation, I recalled a letter that my dad had written to the hospital that had treated him those fifty years ago. It had been a remarkable letter that I had come across in one of the many boxes of papers, photos and family ephemera I inherited when my mother died earlier this century. Intrigued, I had scanned it and sent a copy to an old school friend, a doctor, who lives in Australia, and I resolved to find it when I got home.

I checked my old emails and couldn’t find a copy. I looked at the Finder on my computer, and found a folder from an old but long discontinued email provider. Oh, lackaday, completely unopenable. All files listed as ‘corrupted’.

All my life I have been a collector of different stuff, things like records, books, jeeps and so have a big old-fashioned filing cabinet in my office, full of folders of press cuttings from my time with Roomful of Blues, old tour itineraries, an archive of drawings and photos of clocks that my father, a clockmakerhad designed, old yellowing typed copies of stories I wrote decades ago, folder after folder full of printed stuff, hidden away from the world, but there. Incorruptible, in the short term at least.

And there, in a large green folder marked ‘Correspondence’ were many light brown folders, each diligently labeled. The one marked ‘Postcards’ was full of cards received from friends and relatives over many years, the one marked ‘Personal’ contained letters, typed and handwritten, from old pals around the world, and in the one marked ‘Dad’s accident’, I found the original letter. Well, to be completely accurate, the original carbon copy of the original letter.

We so often hear of those unfortunates in comas, lying silently, motionless in hospital beds, literally comatose, possibly in a vegetative state, and we wonder what, if anything, might be going through their minds. And usually, we never find out.

Fortunately, Dad did recover and was able to recall some of it, and wrote it down. I found his account fascinating to read…

And so did his Doctor …

Well, there it is. An artifact from over fifty years ago, a very real artifact that were it to have been sent as an email - if of course email had existed all that time ago - would in all likelihood not exist artifact-wise today. And so it was with that thought in mind that I took an hour or two to read some of those letters and cards in those folders. Most were handwritten, a few typed. From friends and old work colleagues - I indulged in the nostalgic luxury of picturing their faces as I remembered them. What did they look like now? The ones from Mum and Dad, and from my children were easy to picture, as were those from aunts and cousins, But some of the others, fast friends and brief acquaintances, both remembered and forgotten, were hazier. Some I knew were long gone, the others, who knew? These letters and cards were physical evidence, very real and tangible evidence, of relationships with very real and beloved people. As I looked through them, moments from decades ago were momentarily re-lived, old thoughts, emotions and fleeting impressions came back to life. What a wild filing system is to be found in our brains, what an unending catalog of events, memories, facts and emotions are all stored there, our very own Akashic Records system …. nothing is ever forgotten, all is filed away, and all it takes is a chance moment to pull the file, as it were, and relive that moment. The key phrase here is ‘chance moment’ … alas, I have no Master Index, advising me just how to recall each and every stored memory. The computer, with its attendant means of cyber communication, keeps us in a very present touch but leaves the past in a rapidly disintegrating blur …

Which is, perhaps, just as well, as it is the present in which we have to live.

Anyway, all of this is a way of saying that one thing leads to another, and Britt’s appendix led to all these appendices, and so to an appreciation of the written word - written on flimsy paper - which is nevertheless a darn sight more durable than the cyber version.

And more than anything else, it leads to humble but heartelt acknowledgement of the skills of the medical profession. Good on you, gents - long may you practice and prosper.