Grief addressed

This week has slipped by without me finding time to write regularly as I usually do. Mike's sudden death has thrown me off course. Getting up to Worcester to see Gail is proving difficult to plan given our commitments. The funeral date has been set for the week after I leave for Spain. The logistics of getting there and back in 28 hours in order to attend are stubbornly difficult whether I fly to Cardiff and drive or to Birmingham and drive a hire car, plus the service is on a day when I know duties are planned for me in Malaga. Delaying my arrival by another week, when I have already delayed it by  two weeks from what was originally intended also disrupts Sunday cover plans in place. It's proving hard to come to terms with being absent for the Final Farewell. 

Having said that, however, parting company at the end of our meeting last August, we hugged in a way that didn't come easily to Mike and I having grown up in an era where a conventional smile and handshake was what we were accustomed to. He seemed a little more frail than previously, but we didn't talk about ailments, apart from cursing statins, and the fuss over blood pressure medication, both of us claiming to be well and active enough for our time of life. On reflection, however, along with gratitude and appreciation of our long friendship, there was an unspoken shared awareness of the possibility that any meeting nowadays could be our last. I have two funerals locally next week to prepare for. In the less than usual time I've had to reflect and write, I've been writing my personal tribute to Mike to send to Gail and the family. It's what I would have said if invited to contribute, if I had been able to attend. Looking back across my entire adult life since leaving home and meeting Mike has been absorbing, and has ensured that grieving isn't evaded by the misfortune of absence.

Yesterday morning I celebrated the Eucharist at St John's for just three people. Few of the regulars were there, presumably because they'd turned out yesterday for the Ashing Eucharist. This afternoon, I took the 61 bus out to Fairwater Green, to make a bereavement visit. Both funerals in the coming week are of elderly people whose latter years were blighted by Alzheimer's disease. My task, to listen to their stories and prepare a suitable tribute doing some kind of justice to the entire life they'd lived, not merely dwelling on the tragedy of losing them well before they died. For both families, the end was regarded as a merciful release to their own suffering as well as the person they'd lost. I feel I'm still learning how best to speak consolingly to people in the light of such unhappy experience.