Few popular songs are as tender and evocative as “Try To Remember”, written by Tom Jones for the long-running off-Broadway show The Fantasticks. Premiering May 03, 1960 the musical tells the story of a boy and girl whose love, tested by separation and painful experiences, evolves from innocence into maturity. “Try To Remember” opens the show and invites the theater audience to share a modern version of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” complete with fathers who pretend to feud.
The almost-bare stage—a wooden platform, a wall, a tattered cardboard moon—unfetters the imagination to ponder the song’s poetic lyrics: “Try to remember the kind of September \when life was slow and oh, so mellow... \when grass was green and grain was yellow.” Yet for all its warm sentiment, “Try To Remember” recalls disappointment. It’s plea to try subtly underscores the reality of human struggle and thus highlights a powerful truth. Life has no guarantees. Life is anything but placid and worry-free. Love fails. And loss underscores all remembrance.
The final scene of The Fantasticks reprises its opening song, urging us to learn its heartfelt message. “Deep in December it's nice to remember /without a hurt, the heart is hollow”. Painful experiences are natural, essential even, for human beings to flourish. We mend and repair what we can. We keep the spirit of gentleness alight in one another’s hearts.
Reflecting on one’s past is a peculiarly human thing to do. Self-reflection is most fruitful when it leavens the present moment with meaning and fruitfulness. If memories of yesterday genuinely live, if we are to know them today as friends, it is hope that must nourish them. And what is hope but God’s storehouse of future blessings? Given that what eludes us also astonishes us, we are all the more surprised at how suffering confers a heart of flesh on those who count their blessings. Father Barker
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