Hello (and welcome to new friends here!) How are you and how has your week been?
I’ve spent much of mine picking up the bazillion balls I’ve dropped over the past month since we said goodbye to my mother (I still can’t write those words in a way that feels real). Just over a week ago — ten days maybe? It’s all a blur — we gathered as family and friends for a service that a cousin kindly and beautifully described in a card as “honouring and joyful, despite the sadness involved (what an oxymoron!)”.
And yet, not. It’s that “both/and” thing, again, at its most poignant.
That evening, I shared just one photo on Insta, of my mum and dad on their wedding day. Because, really, it was always all about them, their love, the family they made and the love they showed others.
It was, also, about getting my dad to the service — which wasn’t a given, right up until the last minute. But he made it. That the service coincidentally fell on the day of Our Lady of Sorrows, in the Catholic church of the Italian side of my family — even though it is not the tradition I was brought up in — brought deep comfort.
On Insta I wrote:
Mummy. We said goodbye today and the sun shone though the stained glass windows of the Lady Chapel and it was beautiful. The miracle was my dad being there for her and honestly I have no words for how much it meant to us all, and how grateful we are and how amazed … but this picture says it all. Thank you to all those who’ve held my mum and dad and us all in your thoughts and prayers.
“If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me …
even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is bright as the day,
for darkness is as light with you.” - Psalm 139: 11-12)
I had a shrine lamp burn for my mother at the Oratory, something I’ve never done before, but felt drawn to doing.
My mother loved summer and sunlight, which made us extra grateful — especially given September’s typical, wildly unpredictable British weather (trench coats for the win!)— as it flooded through the church windows, illuminating the scenes from Jesus’ life with his mother, Mary, while we did our best to honour a mother who loved us so well.
Unstoppably, like the light.
Their wedding day was in October 1958 - more than ten years before I came into their lives (no wonder my mum looks so relaxed, ha!).
We had the photo album out on display at the gathering afterwards, and that particular picture jumped out at me as if I was seeing it for the first time. As if I was seeing my mother again after the longest time, and as she once was - the mummy I miss now more than ever, and in a way I wonder if I didn’t feel I could miss fully before now.
One of the loveliest comments on Insta was left by the church where my parents were married, in leafy south west London and the same one in which I was Christened, went to Sunday school (sporadically) and, somewhat randomly, remember singing along to Johnny Mathis’ When A child is Born with my class one Christmas.
Their condolences and prayers would have meant so much to my mother,and says something about the significance of a sacred place where people have gathered in faith over the years — centuries, in some cases - in joy and sorrow, celebration and lament. As James K A Smith puts it in You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit, to “worship with the communion of the saints across the centuries”.
It brought another deep, unexpected comfort. And I’m so grateful.
Kindling the fire
I got talking to some friends the other night about Taizé services, which originated in a French monastic community of Catholic and Protestant brothers in Burgundy. Have you come across them, or ever been to one?
Candlelit, reflective and atmospheric, the ecumenical services are held all over the world and now include chants and prayers from other traditions, including Eastern Orthodox. I’ve only ever been once, to a service in the UK; I imagine attending one in France would be amazing.
Jacques Berthier, a Parisian composer and church organist, began writing for the first French monastic community of Catholic and Protestant brothers, when they formed in 1955.
Within our darkest night,
you kindle the fire
that never dies away.
— Jacques Berthier, for The Taizé Community
Here’s a classic example of their meditative simplicity, which is famous for its repetition.
I’m closing with some words of St John Henry Newman, set to a piece of music by Elgar and featured on the album A Meditation by The Sixteen.
I’m sharing it in full, in case it might bring comfort to someone reading this, or who might want to pass it on.
They are at rest.
They are at rest.
We may not stir the heav'n of their repose
By rude invoking voice, or prayer addrest
In waywardness to those
Who in the mountain grots of Eden lie,
And hear the fourfold river as it murmurs by.
And soothing sounds ….
Angelic forms abide,
Echoing, as words of watch, o'er lawn and grove
The verses of that hymn which Seraphs chant above.
They are at rest.
—St John Henry Newman
With love, and more very soon - I want to come back on the Tessa Kiros book I mentioned last time (it released today, and I’m diving in tonight!), amongst other things.
They are at rest. I love that poem! So comforting. And the picture of the cat❤️❤️😻. Cats have such personalities, don’t they? Thank you for sharing your heart with us!
❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️