Yesterday i went to a memorial service for my cousin Trevor
He was my way older handsome cousin. Always ready with a giggle and soft words.
I didn't know him well . His death was sudden.
His aging parents couldn't go down to his funeral. My lovely Uncle has had many strokes and has lost almost all his expressive language, can't walk and is very tired. He lives in rest home with full care. His loving wife who can't drive lives in another resthome and goes to see him most days.
The rest home where my Uncle lives kindly offered the use of a lounge and a tea room so that we could gather to commemorate Trevor. It was so sad seeing all these elderly people there gathered in a stunned way to farewell one of a younger generation.
But the way that my beautiful Auntie said such loving things about her son. About how much joy he had bought to them. About how glad she was that he didn't have to suffer. She truely celebrated the way he left - knowing how hard it is to linger with disease. and ill health. She cried in my arms about her husband, her "darling" who was suffering so... about how all my Uncle could say was "Gone, Gone" and cry. She said she had touched deep deep grief with Trevor but that her father, whom she loved very much had come to her and said "He's alright" and she had felt peace. And that her sadness was with her darling, her love who was suffering so. She was preparing for him to leave soon- she felt the shock of Trevor's death would be too much for him and although she would be lonely she wanted so much for him, the boy with the thick black hair who the first time she saw him, she knew in her 12 year old heart that he was the one for her and told her cousin right there that she was going to marry him... she wanted that man out of pain.
The selflessness of this love, the tenderness and the comfort of being able to come to this place of celebration so soon after her son's passing was witnessing one of life's true miracles...Bugger man on the moon, bugger nanotechnology this is a miracle in action - Love in the face of grief.
and THEN my friend Claire had this on her Facebook feed and i came back to wondering and grieving about how we have come to a place where the very things that make us human - our frailties and our tendernesses are the things we run from so far that we are willing to pathologise them in order to make them managable - when in fact it is being with those things that heal us and make us remember that we are truely divine
so today i honor love, i honor pain and i honor the miracles that live just waiting for us to realise we hold them in us all along
He was my way older handsome cousin. Always ready with a giggle and soft words.
I didn't know him well . His death was sudden.
His aging parents couldn't go down to his funeral. My lovely Uncle has had many strokes and has lost almost all his expressive language, can't walk and is very tired. He lives in rest home with full care. His loving wife who can't drive lives in another resthome and goes to see him most days.
The rest home where my Uncle lives kindly offered the use of a lounge and a tea room so that we could gather to commemorate Trevor. It was so sad seeing all these elderly people there gathered in a stunned way to farewell one of a younger generation.
But the way that my beautiful Auntie said such loving things about her son. About how much joy he had bought to them. About how glad she was that he didn't have to suffer. She truely celebrated the way he left - knowing how hard it is to linger with disease. and ill health. She cried in my arms about her husband, her "darling" who was suffering so... about how all my Uncle could say was "Gone, Gone" and cry. She said she had touched deep deep grief with Trevor but that her father, whom she loved very much had come to her and said "He's alright" and she had felt peace. And that her sadness was with her darling, her love who was suffering so. She was preparing for him to leave soon- she felt the shock of Trevor's death would be too much for him and although she would be lonely she wanted so much for him, the boy with the thick black hair who the first time she saw him, she knew in her 12 year old heart that he was the one for her and told her cousin right there that she was going to marry him... she wanted that man out of pain.
The selflessness of this love, the tenderness and the comfort of being able to come to this place of celebration so soon after her son's passing was witnessing one of life's true miracles...Bugger man on the moon, bugger nanotechnology this is a miracle in action - Love in the face of grief.
and THEN my friend Claire had this on her Facebook feed and i came back to wondering and grieving about how we have come to a place where the very things that make us human - our frailties and our tendernesses are the things we run from so far that we are willing to pathologise them in order to make them managable - when in fact it is being with those things that heal us and make us remember that we are truely divine
so today i honor love, i honor pain and i honor the miracles that live just waiting for us to realise we hold them in us all along
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