Death, where is thy sting?

It's been a few weeks since I last wrote on here. We had to wait for family to arrive from abroad before we could have Mum's funeral, which took place on Tuesday 14th April. My family has a tradition of 'good' funerals which I suppose must sound very strange to some, but in Yorkshire we have a long tradition of celebrating after a death - with tears, laughter and lots of booze-fuelled anecdotes about the deceased. I remember my Gran was actually laid out in her coffin at home, and as a teenager I approached somewhat fearfully, not quite knowing what to expect.

In fact what I saw reassured me greatly. Gran wasn't 'there' - she'd gone. Somehow, my Gran had left her body, which was literally just a shell (with some rather awful lace trim round her face, I seem to remember, which made me laugh irreverently as she'd - well, never have been seen dead in it...).

Mum was a shell long before she died. The woman who had to leave school at 14 due solely to her father being too mean to pay for the Grammar School uniform (or so the story goes), who loved Dickens and Shakespeare with a passion and knew them better than most English graduates, the woman who usually scored over 300 at Scrabble, who welcomed waifs and strays to her home, who wouldn't let visitors leave until they'd had cheese-on-a-plate or scrambled egg, and who pronounced DH Lawrence 'trite' and the Brontes 'not that good'... this intellectual woman with very little formal schooling had reached the point where her only communication was to say, 'BLAH-BLAH-BLAH!' and blow raspberries. From the outside, at least, there was little of Irene left. Inside, who knows? I cannot say with any certainty what was taking place inside her head, but she seemed happy and content. Before she lost the power of speech, she talked of seeing her mother every day - and after a while I began to think she probably did.

When my father died, I had a long and complicated experience of angels surrounding him and telling me day by day how near to death he was. As Mum travelled that same road, I was puzzled at first that I could see no angels, until it dawned on me that their presence was worked out through the loving care she received from the staff in the home.

On the day Mum died, my daughter and I were driving down to Derby. We were laughing and chatting and suddenly, unbidden, I 'saw' Mum's room and said to my daughter, "Oh! I've just seen the angels arriving in Gran's room!"

She was dead three hours later.

I have no explanation for this. Oh, I can find ways to explain it, all of them rational; but after my Dad's death, and going by the scientific premise that the simplest explanation is the best, I have to say that I still believe in angels...

I couldn't be sad that Mum had died. For me she died years ago, when her eyes glazed and she began to soil herself, forgot how to read, couldn't open cards, or find her food on the plate. And yet until very recently, she would suddenly sing to anyone who was listening, "Once I had a secret love..." in a sweet, almost unearthly voice. It was fitting that my nephew had that song played as her coffin was carried from church - it brought a smile to all our faces. We never knew if she was trying to confess to some affair or if it was simply a favourite, but it was Irene personified.

At the funeral I felt very responsible for how the day was going (it went very well, in fact), because I'd booked the venue for the 'do' afterwards, and decided how much food to order. And there were other things to think about, too... There was a family member in great distress, and many, many others who had known my mother at church and who gravitated towards me because I had also attended all those years ago, and they'd known me as a teenager and been present when I married the curate. I was checking the food was okay, that people had drinks... I was too busy to mourn, or that's how it felt. Very Martha rather than Mary, I suppose.

Anyway tonight I found myself alone for the first time since then, and it hit - I felt bereft (which of course I am). I got in the car, drove to Matlock, sat in the park and wrote this:

Matlock Park

The chilled, perfumed air of a Spring evening

Gently caresses my face,

Speaks peace to my troubled heart,

Promises Summer will come.

Trees are modestly robed in vibrant green,

Their tender shoots a tangle against

A pure blue, pale-as-eggshell sky.

The jubilant cries of skateboarders

Cannot overwhelm the song of birds, who have

Rehearsed for centuries in this very place.

They sing triumphantly of life and love...

I close my eyes;

I'm overwhelmed with Grace.