the room has become very still
There are moments when language lowers its voice.
I am sitting beside my mother’s bed.
Ninety years and six months have brought her here. Daughter. Sister. Beloved wife. Faithful friend. Mother of three – two sons and a daughter. Mother in law. Sister in law. Cousin. Aunt. Grandmother and Great-grandmother. A woman of many gifts. Steady hands. A Christian faith worn lightly and lived deeply.
Our mother loved abundantly. Her parents and siblings. Our father and his family. Friends, neighbours, children, grandchildren. Love seemed to come as naturally to her as breathing, in every hour of every season.
Her hands made our childhood clothes and – later – uniforms, play-wear, trousers, jackets, summer dresses and wedding gowns. And baked countless scones and cakes, held children, comforted friends, tapped out time in a million songs sung, folded in prayer.
Her heart was full upon being named Honorary President of the choir she has loved for forty years. She loved the things of God and sought to represent her Creator’s love well. She loved her parish church. She loved her priest, and told him so. She loved and was always interested in her neighbours – every one of them, young or old.
These hands and this heart have done their work.
And now the room has become very still. Nursing ‘angels,’ and holy archangels, come and go, and their extraordinary kindnesses bring a lump to my throat and healing tears to my eyes, and to our mother’s.
Time feels different here. It gathers itself around small things. A hand held. Eyes opening for a moment. A familiar voice. The quiet rhythm of breathing. A treasured friend tells me that these are blessed moments of ‘witnessing.’ I hear and know that.
Family and friendship are present here, too. Distance, or lack of words, have become no object in the heartfelt nearness and quietness of the hour.
I am full of thanks, just as my mother has been and, beneath her changing presence, still is.
Our lives are usually measured by beginnings. We celebrate arrivals. We announce achievements. We hurry towards whatever comes next.
Very little prepares us for mortal illness, or for the grace of accompanying someone as they come to the end of a long and faithful life. Very little, except for acceptance, or faith, or love, or trust, or all of these, prepares us for coming to the end of our own.
The poet Mary Oliver asked what we would do with our ‘one wild and precious life.’
And R S Thomas, late Vicar of Aberdaron, wrote of ‘the bright field.’ I think of those words often now. Perhaps every life of love leaves a bright field behind – somewhere others enter, finding themselves changed by the encounter, without ever quite knowing why.
I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
of great price …
Our mother answered with ordinary days – with compassion, with creativity, with delight, with empathy, with forgiveness, with gratitude, with hospitality, and with kindnesses offered before they were asked for. With birthday cards and Christmas cards. With her bird-feeders faithfully restocked. With prayers no one else heard – and especially in recent years, for her beloved sister and her family. With faith that remained steady through changing seasons, and all of us ageing. With family gathered around tables and Sunday roasts, or beach rugs and sandwiches.
Outside the birds are singing.
The swallows still cross the sky. Mum’s birds still pour themselves into the morning. The world continues, generous as ever.
I have always loved that.
Creation receives each generation, carries us for a while, then entrusts the world to other hands.
This bedside has become a place of quiet gratitude.
Sorrow has its place. So does peace.
I look at a face shaped by ninety years.
I look at, and hold hands that have loved well.
Some lives leave books.
Some leave buildings.
Some leave themselves in other people.
In other people – trusting each of us to represent well something of the essence of who they’ve always been, and will be; embracing all of their and our so-called ‘failures,’ and all of their and our so-called ‘successes.’
Yes: some leave themselves in other people.
In you and me.
And, through us, in the embrace of Immortal Love.
It is enough to ask of a life.
More than enough.
.