The Imagination of Trees: Prayers for my Mother's funeral

Thursday, 15 May 2008

Prayers for my Mother's funeral

Prayers of thanks:

Thank you for this woman
For her warm embrace, her smiling face.
She has scented our lives with a welcome fragrance
She has been treasured and precious.
Words will sketch our thanks only as a pencil drawing, and our silences and memories will add colour and shape.
We thank you differently, as we knew her differently
Our Mother
Sister
Grandmother
Wife
Aunt
Cousin
Our neighbour
friend
adopted mum
carer
Our listener
consoler
nurturer
fellow of the war-time
generation
patient.
She was woven into our lives, she shaped us with her presence
She shaped fruitful days with the clay of her life
Thank you for the nourishment she brought to life
Thank you for her joy in the smallest details
Clasped hands in sheer delight, her “Brilliant darling!”
Her brimming with pride
Thank you for her cherishing of human life,
her nurturing of fragile lives,
her quirky humour,
her wry smile,
her laughter
- THAT COOKING!
Thank you for her appetite, her Granny soup, her savouring of the palette of life
Thank you God of Life for her enthusiasm
For living every minute of every hour
Her generosity, hospitality, sheer warmth and vibrant energy
She was your gift to us and we had to give her back with reluctant goodbyes and tortured tearful embraces
Thank you for the gift of her life which we were so privileged to share.
We thank you and pray for those who, for whatever reason, can only be here in spirit.
Those who have died, especially June’s son-in-law Trevor,
those who are ill,
those who have to work,
those who are many miles away,
especially June’s sisters Barbara in Sweden and Jenny in Aberdeen.

Prayers of mourning:

We all had to let go
We urged her not to look back
We waded into the water, pushing her boat towards the light.
Unclasped her hands from ours and ours from hers
Wept our goodbyes, played her out, sang for her release, begged for an ending
Our prayers are answered, and she is at peace.
God of healing fade those scarring images of her traumatic ending
Force their savage cruel shapes into the shade of happier memories of wholeness and beauty
Unite us in our love for her
Hold us until the hurt is no longer heard so loudly and a new melody sings to us of her freedom.

Prayers of readiness:

This was a brave woman, defiant and courageous.
She was never afraid of your light, or of your love because she knew it so well already
Her life was shot through with the shining of your eternal love
Yours will be a familiar face, we have seen it in her own.
God of her life
Please take her home.

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My original introduction

This photo was taken by my husband Graham on Iona. It is important here because it represents the way in which my Mum's death and funeral offered me healing. It marks a point at which I have decided, as she did, to be fully myself and live every moment given to me as fruitfully as I can. As part of this I wanted to start a 'new thing' and start allowing people to see more of my writing and therefore live my life more openly.
This blog is a response to the insights so many shared at Mum's funeral. I discovered there that my Mum was so much more than simply my Mum. She was never a saint, had many flaws, she could be frustrating and difficult like me. But I realise that these things were tiny when balanced next to her capacity for living and for giving. What emerged from her funeral was an image of a woman whose appetite for life and for quality of life was remarkable. She was entirely herself with everyone, whatever the cost. She gave all that she had to the people she loved, she fed us, nurtured us and showed us that every detail of every day was a blessing.
I am giving you my writing as part of the fruits of my life and person in honour of her memory and continued presence in my life. It is a risk I am now willing to take. She has given me the courage to live my life boldly.
When my Mum was dying I went to the Cathedral and imagined her saying goodbye at the side of an expanse of water. In my imagination there was a boat waiting for her to depart. In my mind I urged her to get in her boat, turn her back on us all, never look back and hope for the light on the other side of the water.
The boat story of Jesus telling terrified disciples not to be afraid in the storm and calming the waves has always been comfort to me in the storms of my life. There are so many ways of looking at the symbolic meaning of a boat.
For me this photo speaks to me about a song called 'Lord you have come to the lakeside' and in it there is a line. 'Now my boat's left on the shoreline behind me; by your side, I will seek other seas.' It is a line which kept coming to me as a friend of mine sat at her Aunt's bedside in her final hours. I sang it for her and her partner as they said their goodbyes as a prayer for them, because I knew how much they liked it. I think it began to speak to me too. When I urged my Mum to the other shore it seemed that her boat was only her own and no one could be in it with her. In her death I do feel called to 'seek other seas' as a new beginning with which to honour her departing.

Books I'm reading & books I've just read

The New Black; Mourning and Melancholia by Daniel Leader
The Time Travellers Wife
Retribution by Maureen Duffy
The Summer Book by Tove Janson
Voice Over by Celine Curiol
Perfume by Patrick Siskund
Loads of Alan Bennett's writings
Writing Home by Alan Bennett
A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian
Salmon Fishing in The Yemen
Engelby, Sebastian Faulks
The Lolipop Shoes; Joanne Harris
The Prospect of Heaven: Musings of an Enquiring Believer, Frederick Levison
The Courage to Connect; Becoming all we Can Be, Rosemary Lain-Priestley

About my Writing

My writing tends towards the poetic, it has also been described as filmic. It is intensely personal and seeped in Christian imagery and thinking. I think it is spiritual writing in that it is rooted in the belief that there is a God and that God is very real to us in this time and place on earth. I write because it is something I am unable to live without. I write because it is healing and therapeutic. I write out of instinct and because I am by nature 'a writer'. I write for myself and for others that I know and love. I write for specific occasions and for purposes as well as for its own sake. Writing is a pleasure for me.
I write sporadicallly and as the mood takes me, it is not a disciplined exercise but something which emerges from my soul when it needs to be created. I have been astonished to find that people around me need my writing. They ask for what I have written and they ask for more. This blog is an attempt to meet that demand, not because I feel pressured to do so, but because God has given me a gift and it is begging to be used. People are asking me to us this gift fruitfully.
I think my writing is healing in its nature, it is soulful and intimate, it reaches places within us which we do not understand and it sometimes moves people to tears. It doesn't seem that writing like this is a productive or lucrative affair. It is not a 'niche market', it is not designed for profit or thought through in any sense. This approach would disable it.

The Imagination of Trees