Holidays - strategies

Summer in Sydney is school holidays and usually beach weather.

Today I am sitting in an outdoor cafe with long sleeves on - a milder day - just as well as the grandsons are a couple of hundred meters away playing soccer. It is overcast but pleasant. The avocado toast went down well. The trike and two scooters are next to me. Holidays are great!

Mealtimes are harder now I am on my own. They were ‘our’ conversation time. If we were not in the same spot, we tended to call one another around mealtimes, so it seems strange not to share life in this way anymore. I try to eat mindfully, conscious of the flavour and texture of food. Be present. It is a technique to stay grounded and sane.

Having grandsons is such a blessing. They are humourous and clever. They entertain me and they are generally good to be around. I help one with provoking creative imagination and the other with speech and elocution. He has plenty to say! They boys are very well behaved and enjoy life. At 9 and 11, they are full of energy and adventure. They are also good lookers - heartbreakers for sure!

Taking boys to football (soccer) is a delight rather than a chore. It is full of heritage and culture. I can hear Terry talking, whispering in my ear. He has plenty to say about how coaching should happen. He loved junior football - seeing boys grow and develop and learn to read the game. His soccer boys knew he cared that they cared. He wanted to instill values and consideration and team-sense. Mostly, he did pretty well and that - according to the boys anyway.

I am free again. I finished last week with my congregations at Parramatta Mission and I dont start for a few weeks at Eastwood. There is no-one here that I am fully responsible for now. Sure, I have the boys for a week or so, but I hand them back before school starts. Then, for a whole 4 weeks, I am just me, myself, I. I will invest in myself.

A few things I am hoping to achieve:

- daily yoga

- daily walking

- listening to Bible Project podcasts

- doing 1 hour each day of Chinese [Mandarin] lessons

- eating well

- improving my sleep patterns

- prayer and meditation

It seems like a long list, but COVID prevents some other goals and I really want to feel the holiday a bit and not get thrown too quickly into work, so this is the attempt at a wishlist. I might even lose a kg or two (I hope)!

After 363 days

363 days ago, my beloved Terry was struggling to breathe. Dear Friends were staying with us and seeing to his meds and personal needs. I was napping for an hour or two every 4-5 hours, in between holding vigil. The final days involved many people passing through our bedroom, whispering thanks and blessings, sometimes singing and laughing at shared stories. I don’t know how much he was aware of in those final days. I do remember my old A Capella group, Mixed Blessing, singing carols from our balcony through the screen door. He seemed to rally for a few precious moments of consciousness to beam at them. He couldn’t talk by then, but he smiled beautifully, making so much effort feel like a good investment. The power of singing lifts the soul and comforts the spirit. Perhaps their voices called home a little closer to heaven? I like to think so.

 

This time last year, we joked that he was at the gates of heaven but had offered St Peter to go take a smoko while he did the welcoming. He lingered there for awhile… one foot here, one foot there. I imagined his friends on the other side, telling him to stop wasting time and come in. He was in no rush. He would companion others who were less certain of the way. He knew things would be ok.

 

Today I attended Van Gogh Alive at the old Moore Park Showgrounds. It took me back nine years to when we had visited the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, and a few years later when we visited Arles and St Remy, following in the footsteps of the vibrant and troubled painter. Van Gogh said that he devoted his passion and soul to his art and he paid for it with his mind. Terry’s brain cancer took some of his faculties, but his passion and soul stayed true. He lived life in vibrancy. He never stopped living to the fullest. When others might have resigned themselves to a quieter existence, he simply made even greater efforts to learn new ways of overcoming the obstacles. I learnt determination from him.

 

Grief can be a mixture of tears and smiles, a catch of breath and remembered love. Van Gogh mentioned love a lot. Love and beauty – related themes, for beauty is appreciated in loving. Maybe this is the promise of resurrection – that even after death, surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life – and, one day – I will dwell in the house of the Lord, forever and ever.

 

Tonight I will watch some ‘hit and giggle’ (T20) cricket at the SCG, sitting in ‘our seat(s)’ on the deck of the MA Noble Stand. I will hang on to the inherited membership a little longer, just to see if his grandsons learn to appreciate the heritage. So many years, we sat in companionship there, often accompanied by dear friends. It will be strange to be there without him, but I suspect he will be watching.

 

Prayer in a Waiting Room (or outdoor queue)

As I put my mask on...

Lord, keep me mindful of the safety of others.

As I journey to the testing centre...

Lord, may I be purposeful and calm

As I use the hand sanitiser...

may I trust in the testing and healing hands of others.

As I fill in the forms on arrival...

May I appreciate my connectedness and relationships with others and the capacity to communicate.

As I wait for me number to be called....

Lord, bless those who sit around me, ease their hearts and minds and may they be well, in all manner of things.

As I enter the testing space...

May I be still and helpful to the one who will care for me.

As I am tested...

Lord, I pray for this brave person, testing possible cases every day... keep him/her safe and full of peace and wisdom.

As I depart...

Lord, I give thanks for the possibility of being tested and having access to treatment and support.

Bless testing centres and people who work in them.

Bless those who are presenting.

God watch over us.

Amen

Prayer for Distant Farewells

Kneeling on lands far apart, we offer our prayers:

God of all times and places, 

from the grounding of where we are, 

we become conscious of eternal life and the promise of Heaven.

It is so hard tp be apart.

We long for touch and comfort.

We long to be able to connect as we have in the past.

We grieve the present that is also not present.

In faith, then, we ask to be held together by Your Spirit, O God.

Hold our souls within You. 

Bless the love and longing we have for one another.

How do we saw farewell?

God bless us in our parting and promise us a heavenly reunion.

How do we give thanks for the treasures of our loving?

God bless our memories and nourish the future.

How do we say sorry for the regrets that remain?

God forgive us and help us to give and receive forgiveness.

How do we hold our hearts?

God, you see and hear and know the depths within. Hold and heal us.

We name and know our belonging to one another and our belonging to you.

God bless us in our departing.

Acts of Faith

For Siddy 

We have discovered fresh acts of faith:

To preach hope when feeling hopeless,

To preach joy when overcome with despair,

To preach love from beneath the waves of anger,

To preach healing from a broken soul.

We are the ones who remain:

To act as cheerleaders and encouragers,

To mentor and counsel and guide,

To sympathise and empathize

To carry those whose burdens weigh heavy.

This is not my anniversary, 

but I lay under the quilt of her grief and her hope.

This is not the day of my mourning

but i remain held by the prayers of the one who is gone.

Don’t try to hang on to the butterfly.

From a great distance our friendships are anamnesis.

They were, and are and are yet to be,

Acts of faith in the living and dying and rising again - 

Our lives are acts of faith...

In mystery and promise.

The Heart

At the end, in those last hours, I place my hand on your heart... willing it to stop, encouraging it to ‘go home’. It was the most painful thing I ever did and still haunts me with grief.

Your heart wrapped mine,

Gesling it, protecting it,

Teaching me new layers of love

And new depths to being loved.

Now I must learn 

To keep the seed you have placed in my heart,

To allow it to die, resurrect and grow.

New shoots of life will emerge 

from my heart, nourished by yours.

One day, a blossoming will come 

and I will place the seed of love to be treasured 

into the hearts of those I leave behind.

I receive the gift from you 

and commit to passing it on.

Unfilled Gap

Today I came across a quote by Dietrich Bonhoeffer,

There is nothing that can replace the absence of someone dear to us, and one should not even attempt to do so. One must simply hold out and endure it. At first that sounds very hard, but at the same time it is also a great comfort. For to the extent the emptiness truly remains unfilled one remains connected to the other person through it. It is wrong to say that God fills the emptiness. God in no way fills it but much more leaves it precisely unfilled and thus helps us preserve -- even in pain -- the authentic relationship. Further more, the more beautiful and full the remembrances, the more difficult the separation. But gratitude transforms the torment of memory into silent joy. One bears what was lovely in the past not as a thorn but as a precious gift deep within, a hidden treasure of which one can always be certain.

Of course, I am sure I have read this before. I am sure I reflected on it seriously and studiously. Now I read it and the tears flow, more flood-like than ever before. Eight months and two weeks... but who is counting! I knew I would grieve, but perhaps I never knew what this flavour of grief would be. There have been other griefs, but whole chunks of my own soul departed those last breaths. As much as I hunt the cupboards, I cannot find those pieces of my soul... and the Makita drill... it has disappeared too, and there is no-one to ask where it is!

I reflected today on the emptiness and the pain of this ongoing, authentic relationship.Do I even hope for the silent joy? It is hard to imagine in the torment of memory. Yet I find myself constantly searching for memories to try to appreciate and give thanks for that life-giving moment to counter each little death. I look for the silent joy in the taste of juice or the wearing of a T-shirt. I seek a hint of what was lovely in a sip of coffee or a favoured song. I catch myself trying to appreciate what was once deemed beautiful in the echo of today.

Echoes are exactly that. The sound of the echo reminds how terribly far away the voice has gone. Presence cannot be captured in the bounce of reflected story. It is real and it is remote.

I know there is a hidden treasure. And when one finds a hidden treasure in a field you sell everything to buy the field. It is no surprise, therefore, that I would continue to search the stories to husband my treasures.