Finding my way home

The silence after a death of someone you love can often be one of the hardest moments of grief. Their sudden departure no matter how well you have prepared yourself can shake the certainties of conversations you once had. The working through the practical events of preparing for the funeral, receiving phone calls, cards and messages can often help to carry you through days that seem to be lost in activity and preparations. I wanted to particularly thank the many message of support and prayer which I received on the death of my mother last December. I deeply appreciated the kindness and the support I received at this sad time. I thought I would take this opportunity to share some of my own struggles at this time which may resonate with some of your own.

The immediate impact is the loss of home. This is not just saying farewell to a physical place where Mum used to live but the spiritual connections which that place had for me. There is a sense of connection which resonates in the place where she lived and called home. I recognize that this disorientation can cause a sense of aimlessness and emptiness. There are many things that can remind me of Mum but which are not Mum. There is a feeling of being broken open to the wind and laid bare before the world. You look for things that can continue to guide your footsteps. In cleaning up the unit where she lived it is often hard to let go of things in a hurry for fear that you do it all too quickly and move on.

Then there is the sense of whether you are crying for yourself or for the person who has died. The rupture of that connection lays you open to many phantoms and memories of what is important to life. Am I doing this for myself, am I doing this for my mother or am I doing this for some other reason. There is a call not to manufacture grief but to recognize the ripples of sadness that can seem to overcome you and which lie at the heart of my prayer. There is a call to allow my prayer to become more real and not manufactured. The call is to be myself.

However, in the days following Mum’s death there have been consolations which remind me that in the midst of the tears that her spirit rests with God. These have been moments when rainbows appear at crucial moments. They seem ethereal and transitory but they hold the sense of wonder which lay at the heart of my Mother’s search for meaning. I also gain a stronger sense that I can be myself in the face of a world which would seek to redefine me. I think this is at the centre of the spiritual life. We are called to be the person that God calls us to be. We are called to be faithful to that calling which allows us to become more and more transparent to God’s grace. At the time of greatest trial, the words of Julian of Norwich ring true, “All shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.”