A hymn is a song

or it should be. The definition of a "hymn" is usually a song or a poem which praises a deity of some sort.

The matter came up yesterday when a friend stopped me in the post office and told me quietly that her mother had died. She was quite calm about this. Her mother was ninety-six, had been ill for a long time and was "ready to go".

Her mother was also an intensely religious person...and I mean intensely. For years she ran a business in the shopping centre. When it folded she still ran a ticketing agency. Often there would be no customers at the little booth and M...would sit there with her eyes closed. Many people thought she was asleep but she wasn't. She was praying. She spent hours in prayer, many hours.

It was not something she talked about. I only knew because her daughter told me about it. Her daughter would occasionally mention other things as well, such as her mother's attendance at church more than once a week and her mother's involvement in other church related activities. Her mother's faith seemed to be absolute. She appeared to have no doubts at all.

Not so long ago her daughter said to me, "Mum's impatient to go to God...but he's keeping her waiting." It was an interesting thought. I am reminded of the occasion when one of the local priests told me, "Most of the saints were very impatient people." The remark came after I had remarked about something requiring "the patience of a saint".

M... apparently kept praying even in the hospice where she ended her life. The hospice was once run by nuns and it still has a strong "Catholic" presence about it. It is a "good" place - as much as a place for the dying can be "good". 

The funeral for M... will be held on Friday. It is being held at the big monastery church up the hill from here. There will be a "Holy Rosary" the evening before. I am not familiar with such Catholic traditions. I know the Mass the following day will be very solemn and very traditional. The music will be solemn too. It is what M... would have wished for, what her family will expect. The words "celebration of life" will almost certainly be mentioned but it will not be as it was for the Senior Cat. He asked me to make sure that people went out of the church to "something happy, preferably the song our African kids sang for me".  

"Banaha" is a nonsense song. The words are in a Congolese dialect. There are many versions of it on the internet. It is a song which should be sung in canon or as a round. It should be sung loudly and cheerfully and quickly.

Yesterday, and for another purpose, I wrote some English words for the tune. It is perhaps a hymn of a sort because a hymn is a song and we need songs in our lives. I wonder what M... would have made of it.