How's Your Latin?

​Well, I don’t read or speak Latin either and none of the people in my circles know Latin except for common phrases like ‘Carpe Diem’ and ‘Et tu, Brute?’ So, I was surprised to discover that I could squeeze out meaning if I became still and looked at each word individually. 
 
I found this inscription, ‘Virtus Junxit Mors Non Separabit’, on the inside of my deceased father’s ring. 

​My father died many, many years ago, and my mother had kept some of his things. So, when my mother passed away in recent years, I found myself going through her drawers and boxes, mostly discarding or giving away items. His ring was one of the things I was drawn to keep. Only later did I notice the tiniest inscription on the inside of the gold band. Even with a magnifying glass, it is quite difficult to read. His name and a date of significance for him, although I don’t know what it signifies, is also inscribed inside the gold band. Such delicate work. 
 
After finding my father’s ring, I tried wearing it. It fit on my middle finger, although he had worn it on his ring finger. But, alas, I broke out in a rash underneath the ring every time I put it on. I reckon there was a message in that (Don’t wear it!) so I put it in a box and nearly forgot about it again. About a year ago, I rediscovered it and decided to give it another go - this time I can wear it without the resulting rash.  Hmmmm.
 
A couple of weeks ago, I remembered the inscription inside of the ring. This is when I sat with the words. “Virtus junxit mors non separabit.”
 
Virtus = that’s close enough to Virtue, to be a possibility
 
Junxit = I was a bit dubious about this one but maybe, junction or joined?
 
Mors = I was lost on this one, remorse? When I looked it up I found it meant death, and started to see some modern day references as in ‘mortician’
 
Non = Easy, eh. Obviously, no or not 
 
Separabit = How could this not mean Separate?
 
Putting it together in a sentence, with my guessed-at interpretation it read:
Virtue joined with death does not separate.  
 
The smoother interpretation, which I ‘googled’ is this:
 
What virtue has joined together death shall not separate.
 
The ring was something my father wore for years. I actually remember him wearing it and I don’t have a great memory for details of the past. I see from the date on the inside of the ring, he possibly wore it from the time I was 4 years old. On the outside of the gold band is the triangular symbol of the Free Masons. 
 
Father’s Day in Australia is celebrated in September so there were reminders everywhere about the importance a father has in one’s life and appreciation for all those men who fill the role of a father, often to children they have not sired. My father has been dead for over 35 years, so my memories are very distant. What I was thinking about this year was that: I wish I would have made more of an effort to know my father, to really know him. The man I knew was a functioning alcoholic, hard-working but damaged from having served in the trenches of Germany in WWII. After returning from the war, he met my mother, they married and had a family. He was a travelling salesman and not home much while I was growing up. He never went to church, although my mother went and took us kids to Sunday School (which I did not like). As I understood it at the time, my dad didn’t believe in God because God wouldn’t have made people live through a war. And yet, all these years later, I discover that the ring he always wore was a Free Mason ring with the inscription “Virtus junxit mors non separabit.”
 
What virtue has joined together death shall not separate.
 
A friend of mine, whose father was also a Free Mason, tells me that Freemasonry could be described as a secular, fraternal and charitable organisation whose members are united by a belief in God as the Supreme Being. Key tenets include thoughtfulness for others, kindness in the community, honesty in business, courtesy in society and fairness in all things.
 
I wish I had known that man, the one who wore a Free Mason ring. 
 
A few years before my mother died, my brother and his family had taken her out to dinner at a nice restaurant. It was somewhere they went on special occasions as it was a bit more expensive than what they would normally do. While they were eating, a well-dressed man approached their table and introduced himself as someone who had worked with my dad many years earlier. He apparently recognised my mother. He said he just wanted to say hello and pass on his well wishes. He said he wouldn’t be where he was today had it not been for our father. When my brother went to pay the bill after dinner, he was told that another customer had already paid the bill. I have always loved that story. To think that my father’s kindness had left an imprint on another man’s life to such an extent that they remembered him many years after his death, and as a return of favour or a show of respect, that man paid for my family’s dinner. 
 
I wish I had known that man, the one who had been thoughtful of others and kind in the community. But I didn’t. Instead, I occasionally put on his ring knowing that what virtue has joined together death shall not separate.  
 
PS  I’ve since learned another Latin phrase;  ‘pater meus' meaning ‘my father’.
 
 

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