A Little Matter of Life and Death....

Saturday 28th January 2017

  🌈 We have our first Airbnb guest baby in The Blue House - A gorgeous 3 week old schnuggley  zen-like Buddha boy with a head of shiny black hair and a wise, knowing expression.  It is a sunny lazy Saturday morning in the kitchen and we are drinking coffee and playing pass the adorable baby…None of us can resist wanting to cuddle this warm, perfect form. This wriggling, stretching gurning delight…..The new, innocent, sweet smelling miracle of a new life….

   ...🍂Then we get the phone call.

The one we have known to expect for so long.

The one that takes us 2 hours on 4 motorways to a different home.

   🍂It is currently a sad, tired place.  The house where 58 years ago the life of the man I love was rather precariously received onto the living room floor.  Today, now,  the gentle kind, sweet Mother who gave him life, breathed her last exhausted breath, from her bed in what was once the dining room of the family home. The new home she entered as a young wife in 1952. 

   🍂I got to say good-bye to the familiar face that rested
as if sleeping….Finally relaxed, at peace and free of pain and confused anxiety, she looked younger. Dare I say it; even peaceful. The deep etched lines on her face have smoothed, her fine white hair, once dark, dark brown feels silky soft as I stroke her head, her skin still warm as I kiss her and tell her I love her one last time. I feel a mixture of sadness, disbelief and, dare I say it... relief.

               ❤Ale-ha Ha Shalom - may she rest in peace.❤

                       🌱A completed circle of life.🍂

   🌱She was an Austrian Jewish child who’s mother made the ultimate sacrifice of putting her daughter alone onto the Kinder-transport - her best chance of survival. 

Of life.

  🌱She found refuge in England as a young Jew and departed this earthly realm as one of John Wesley’s devout Methodists. The Jewish prayer for the dead - The Kaddish may be deemed inappropriate by some, but I/we will recite it anyway, if only to complete another, different circle.  It will be a nod of respect to her early roots and a reminder of the hope that one day we will be able to fill in some of the empty spaces of her early life in Vienna. Then we can speak of her beginnings to future generations with clarity not vagueness.

   🌺 This lady who has breathed her last today was more than a mother-in-law to me; for many years she was a de-facto mother when my own was lost.  She accepted me being brought into her family’s life by her beloved son without question or apparent judgment.  I came with a bundle of messy baggage which she and I spent many, many hours trying to unpack and unravel, bonding over shared stories and confidences along the way. I’m not sure if we ever did complete the unravelling, but having an older, wise, strong woman who I trusted and adored to confide honestly and openly in, was a blessing she seemed too humble to realise the importance or significance of.🌺 

  
   🌳 This woman was also a devoted wife of 63 years, a mother of 3, grandmother of 6, a radiographer, epic gardener, knitter, seamstress, country dancer…in fact a whole raft of talents, many of which she was shyly dismissive of.  Knitting was one of the last creative things her brain lost the ability to transmit to her fingers...I photographed those fingers at work when I first realised something more than the forgetfulness we all experience from time to time was going on and she revealed she was frightened for what lay ahead...I made her promises that I was unable to keep...

  

  🍂I /we will miss you beautiful lady, but truth to tell I did my real mourning for you while you were alive as I watched your consciousness slip away into a twilight zone far, far removed from reality.  I hope though that you could feel the love that surrounded you and that you had a sense of fulfilment in life and all you had achieved.🍂

  

  🍂I thank all the heavens above that you survived and gave birth to Stephen, without whom there would be no Oliver and Amber, no soul mate to complete me, no family of my own to nurture and grow.  I thank you from the bottom of my tender, bruised heart for that gift above all others. It has been a true blessing and privilege to have you in my life sharing the journey to this point. 

  🌳 Chosen family, tribe, roots and love.  The great, unfolding story that we are all a part              of. 

     🌳 The only stuff that matters.
     🌳 The only stuff that keeps us grounded in reality.

                      

                                ♥︎🌳 Shalom 🌳♥︎