Death and rebirth
Yesterday I went to the funeral of a friend I shared a flat with over 50 years ago. We were very close at the time, but after we left college we both went our separate ways as did our lives. Meeting him again a couple of years ago was a pleasure. Yes, he was older but so are we all, but what shone through was his sense of fun and love of life. After talking to him for just a few moments I could hear and see that young man from a different age.
It was so sad to hear that he had died, the news came by Facebook. In my youth, it would have been by telegram. Such a shock for his family and many friends and since he was three years younger than me seemed very unfair.
I cannot compare my sense of loss and grief to those who were closer or knew him better, but he was the second peer of mine to die within a month. Two people both friends, both called John, are both now dead through means other than this terrible plague COVID. Yes, we all die – such an overused phrase! I know we do and I have been to funerals before, but this does not explain how I feel.
I know sorrow, I know grief; my father died when I was a child. He was there one day and then found dead on the same day. I saw him laying on the settee with a vicar giving the last rites when I came home from a Boy Scout camp! My mother is dead, elderly friends that I had helped by doing their garden or shopping have died, but all these were older than me; this separation gave distance. It did not reduce the sadness, but their deaths did not remind me of my own death. That is what has changed.
The fragile mortality of these later deaths of friends has rebounded onto me and it makes me feel guilty. In the midst of my personal loss of good friends and the terrible loss felt by their families and those close to them, I feel my own mortality and guilt at being so unintentionally selfish. As I walked past John’s coffin I felt like saying “move over, there is room for me as well”.
So, today I went for a long walk, a Mindfulness walk, to ponder the fragility of life like so many before. I have no solutions, no easy words, and no comfort other than a few photographs of rebirth and the promise of Spring leading on from the death of Winter. Does our death lead to a new Spring?
How many times has that question been asked; is there anyone who had not asked it at some time?
Pussy willow (Salix caprea) catkins trying to emerge.
A small (5mm) female flower of Hazel (Corylus avellana), shows such delicate and bright red stigmas.
Male catkins of Hazel hanging proudly.
