Until we meet again

Words of appreciation for my mother who died on 7th March 2014 (abridged)

‘I am going to prepare a place for you – I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am’ (John 14.3)

These words spoken by Jesus in the 14^th chapter of the Gospel of St John read earlier could also be put into the words of my mother.  She could be saying this to each one of us ‘I am going to prepare a place for you …’.

Hospitality, kindness, warmth, wisdom, tact, patience and wit are all words we could associate with her as we knew her over her long life.

If I could sum up what it was like to know my mother, to talk with her and listen to her – I would say that

she would put you at ease.

In other words, she was a person of peace. I think that this was so for three mutually-reinforcing reasons:

• 1.      She lived at peace with herself;
• 2.      She lived at peace with others; and
• 3.      And above all she lived at peace with God to whom she has now returned in a special way.

Another way of describing her was provided by my late grand uncle who once told her, in jest, that she was ‘disgustingly cheerful in the mornings’.

The song by Marty Haugen ‘Dona Nobis Pacem’ from the album ‘The Silence and the Song’ is for me, significant.  I will read out the words because every word and every sentence I am going to speak tells of particular moments or enduring traits evident in my mother’s life.

Peace be yours when dawn is breaking.

Peace be yours when shadow fall

May your restless heart be cradled in the One who holds us all

Peace when storms surround and shake you

Peace through wind and hail

Know that God will not forsake you though your heart and spirit fail.

Peace be yours through pain and sadness

Peace when hope seems at an end.

May the God of Joy and Gladness

God’s own peace be ever with you

May your spirit dwell in mine till the Day beyond tomorrow

Till the dawn beyond all mind

And therefore it is time to move along but not to say farewell but rather

‘Until we meet again’