For my Mother

We held a memorial service for my mother today in Portsmouth Methodist Church. The service opened with Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika, which was very moving. We didn’t want to put her in a horrible tradtional coffin, so we found a beautiful wickerwork, eco-friendly one that I think she would like. It’s really quite an experience choosing a coffin for some one you love…..

My brothers and sisters and I all got up to say what she had meant to us, and I feel good that I was able to do that.

When I was a child, my greatest fear was always that my mother would die. It was the one thing that terrified me more than monsters under the bed or things that go bump in the night – to be deprived of her presence seemed the ultimate separation.

But she didn’t die, and my brothers and sisters and I grew to adulthood and went our separate ways. It seemed that she would live forever. Even when she began to get sick, I never doubted that she would make a full recovery, because she was my mother and I still needed her. There was still so much that we needed to do together, so much of my life I still wanted to share with her. I wanted her to help bring up my children, because I know she is really good at it.

So it was a real shock when my phone rang early on Tuesday morning to say she was likely to die any minute. I really didn’t know what to do, and so I went into automatic mode and continued to get dressed for work, left home and caught the bus. I was sitting on the bus in turmoil, my heart pounding and my head spinning, not knowing what to do but going through the motions anyway.

Then I began to feel an incredible peace come over me. I took a breath in, and felt calm, and heard a gentle voice was telling me that everything was OK, that I didn’t need to worry. As soon as I felt this calm, my phone rang again with the message that she had just died.

As so, despite evidence to the contrary, I refuse to believe that she is dead. I don’t believe she is dead, because I feel her all around me. When I hear my family laughing together, she is there. When we share a meal, she is with us. And when one of us cries alone because we feel we have lost her, she is on hand to comfort us.

My mother raised all of us with love. The most striking memory of my childhood is this sense of being surrounded and protected by her love. It made our family a safe haven from the strange and sometimes hostile world outside. We were very privileged to have experienced it.

And when I think of my mother’s love, and of her mother’s love for her, and the love of her mother before her, and so on back to the beginning, I am humbled to realise that I am here today because of an unbroken chain of love stretching back to the beginning of time.

Everything I have learnt that is truly worth knowing – how to be human in this world – I learnt from my parents, who got it from theirs. It seems that true wisdom is not found in books, but in the human heart.

It is a sobering thought, and one that fills me with a responsibility to pass on that love and that wisdom. And so, while I honour my mother Ruth, I would also like to honour my mother’s mothers, and mothers everywhere, for their service of love that keeps the world turning. Because the biggest thing I learned from my mother is that love is all that matters.

One of the good things that has come out of my mother’s death is that it has brought us all together again. We are a big family, and we are spread across the world. This is as it should be, because we moved a lot as a family and were never tied to a place. Also, my mother brought us all up as individuals, and so we have all followed the road less travelled in our own ways.

This is the first time in many years that all of us are together under one roof, and it has been a wonderful experience. Having my brothers and sisters together in the same house, with my father, was like having a part of my childhood back. So for that gift, thank you, mom. All of us are part of you, and as we go out into the world, we’ll be taking you with us.

And so my mother is not dead. She lives on through us. Every time we extend the love that she showed us to some one else, she lives. Whenever we share together she lives. In the grand scheme of things, there is no separation.

My mother always loved new experiences. She was a brave and adventurous spirit. She has taken a step on her next great adventure, and we know she is loving it. And all though we miss her, we know she wouldn’t want us to be miserable, but to celebrate with her. And so, even though it is painful and difficult, we are ready to let her go and to wish her god speed.

So go well, mother, I love you. We all do.