Mind, remind me — a poem about malapropism in old age

Is this what our father meant by his sublime malapropism in old age, “God the Golden Syrup”?

In his eighties, our dad was inclined to use the wrong word, a word that half-rhymed with the word he intended. Farmer instead of Father. Golden Syrup instead of Holy Spirit. They would just pop out with (often) hilarious effect. Or he would create an approximation of an elusive word, also with hilarious effect. (Example: a hole in a sock was “a temporary absence of stitches”.) Now we are older, aphasia is a fact of life and we all scrabble around for the right word. Sometimes a sister leaps in to provide it, and away goes the conversation again.

He was blessed by the Holy Farmer,
God the Father, God the Son
and God the Golden Syrup,
How random and how rural
are our thoughts.
Mind, re-mind me:
are you still mine?

Words I can never remember:
laminate, locknit, perspex.
Words I can always remember:
mitochondria, muehlenbeckia
tivaevae, umeboshi.
Names I can always remember:
none, not one.

Meanwhile, I talk with momentum
or aim for the noun.
Eat blueberries.
And get me to the gym.

Rachel McAlpine

Please don’t imagine I’m being blasphemous in the first verse or in the photo of a golden syrup bottle swathed in an ecclesiastic stole. In our home, the religious and the domestic were similarly entwined. The first three lines are straight from the mouth of our beloved father, an Anglican clergyman—one of many fascinating malopropisms uttered in his old age. I hope I’m half as funny when my time comes. (You will tell me, won’t you?)

Muehlenbeckia astonii, my favourite New Zealand plant. And what a word!