Life & Death Part 2. Walking in the light, a life well lived, three orphans & time to move on…

Our mum used to say  ‘..as Methodists we have faith and don’t believe in superstition’. We had no problem holding dad’s funeral on Friday 13th January. It turned out to be a day that started with a light covering of snow, but this didn’t settle and we were able to follow the hearse from Thornton Dale to the Crematorium in Scarborough. On the journey there, and also on our return, we saw a complete and very bright rainbow. Adam, our funeral director and fellow Methodist, commented – ‘Seeing a sign like that, makes you realise all will be well’.

Light also had a part to play the day dad died at the end of December. We had been staying for the week at a cottage on the North York Moors, with my wife’s family to celebrate Christmas. It was a beautiful spot with views over the hills & valleys of the moors. We enjoyed stunning sunrises and on many nights the sky was so clear we could see an endless canopy of stars. With the only artificial light from houses in the village and RAF Fylingdales early warning station, it was a ‘dark sky’ area.

Dad was nearing death as the result of his Parkinson’s causing an inability to swallow two weeks’ previously. After a short spell in hospital – beside the crematorium that he would return to – dad was allowed to go back to his care home in Pickering for palliative care. Our cottage was only a 30 minute drive away, so we visited him several times. My younger brother, Andrew, and his family called in to see him on their way to relatives in the south.

The night before dad passed away I set off to drive the short journey, but a heavy fog had come down. It was obvious after taking 10 minutes to get less than a mile that it was a dangerous journey without streetlights or markings at the edge of the roads. A phone call to the home confirmed that it was they same there. I had already visited dad that morning and now he was settled down for a good night’s sleep. I returned to the cottage.

Next morning I woke up early; the fog had cleared and through the skylight a host of bright stars shone in. Lying in the quiet stillness I thought about dad and prayed to God that if it was His will then it was time to let go, and for dad to pass on to his next life. I also remembered my mum who had died four years ago of a sudden heart attack. Dad had missed her terribly and took about two years to get over his grief. Recently, in a cruel twist brought on by his dementia, dad had started asking us when we visited if we had seen mum, as she hadn’t been to visit him for a while. If we told dad the truth he looked shocked and said it was too much to bear. We decided not to lie but changed the subject and distracted him with something else.

As I got up and went down for breakfast, the sun was just coming up over Fylingdales and the sky was a beautiful pale orange colour. The air was still and a few tufts of high, white cloud were visible. Through the large glass kitchen doors overlooking the garden & fields of sheep, a tawny owl flew past slowly and gently settled out of sight among a clump of grasses. A rabbit hopped across the gravel driveway and under the wooden gate to the field. Four female pheasants came onto the lawn to feed on the breadcrumbs and nuts we had put out. A robin and sparrow sat on top of the wooden table where we had put the remaining food.  The place was teeming with life and the beauty of nature.

There was no mobile phone signal so we had been using wi-fi and WhatsApp to communicate. We finished breakfast and were packing up to leave, as we were due out by 10am,  when Anne Marie (the owner and nurse manager of the care home) sent me a message asking me to call on WhatsApp. I managed to speak to her long enough to tell me that dad had passed away a few minutes before. I heard her say it was peaceful then the signal went and I couldn’t phone back. Driving up the half mile farm track to the main road I managed to find a good signal to call Andrew. Anne Marie had called him already, and we shared a short silence and a sense of relief that it was over. I called the home to say I would visit after we left the cottage.

As I made the journey to Pickering the sun was rising higher against blue sky & reflecting off the rail tracks in the deep wooded valley of the preserved steam railway that curves through the moors. I passed the end of a narrow track off the road down which lie the ashes of dad’s brother and wife, overlooking the valley and the moors beyond.

The closer I got to town the fog, light at first, got thicker so that by the time I got to the care home it was dark, damp and cold. As Anne Marie took me to see dad she told me that she had checked on him at 25 to 9 and he was sleeping peacefully and five minutes later she came back and he had died. The night shift hourly care records all said ‘settled and sleeping quietly’. Dad’s earthly life had come to a peaceful and pain-free end. Anne Marie confided that when she awoke that morning she too had prayed the same words as me. When she had opened the window to ‘let his soul free’ as they do in many hospitals and care homes, I like to think that dad escaped the darkness of the town and soared up to see his brother and sister-in-law at that beautiful spot I passed on the way in. A place where the sky was blue, the sun shining and the birds singing. All would be stillness and peace.

Anne Marie gave me dad’s Bible to read whilst I sat with him. A bookmark was placed at the first chapter of John’s first letter; a section headed The Word of life, walking in the light.

God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.  If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth.
But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.

 There was a Post-it note in dad’s writing of two other passages about faith and actions and helping those in need. A further bookmark was at Psalm 121 which we had used in mum’s service. It seemed that I had been given the readings and theme for dad’s service of remembrance.

Dad’s was the first dead body I have seen. When I kissed the top of his head it was cold, but holding his hand it was still warm. I sat quietly listening to the hymns which had been playing all week at his bedside. I cried a few tears, but the overwhelming feeling was one of gratefulness & peace.

I am usually a blubbering wreck at funerals, even for people I barely know and who have been ill for a long time. I was always amazed that the family could stay so calm. However, having spent two weeks planning the service and writing dad’s tribute, for the service back at Thornton Dale Chapel, after the shorter one at the crematorium, it seemed natural to be calm and speak joyfully of dad’s life of faith and service. We shared lots of stories and some jokes with his church friends and family from near and far. This continued over lunch afterwords.

I was given a book for Christmas written by one of my cousin’s friends Rosalind Bradley titled ‘A Matter of Life and Death’, consisting of 60 short passages by various people sharing their experiences of death.  It asks us to treat death as a natural part of life. To think, talk and plan for it, so that when it comes – which it certainly will – we and those who know us can go through the process in a peaceful, ordered way. I have yet to finish it, but some useful words found already are;

Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.    Rabindranath Tagore.

Do not seek death. Death will find you. But seek the road which makes death a fulfilment.  Dag Hammarskjold’s words as chosen by Arrchbishop Desmond Tutu in his foreword.

Our dead watch over us from inside our hearts. We talk to them, they talk to us, and their love and wisdom bless us.   Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg.

The picture at the start of this blog is we three brothers who can now be classed as orphans, standing next to ‘mum’s tree’ at Wilton in front of the small Anglican church. We buried mum’s ashes under a flowering cherry we bought to replace one that had died. The bungalow in the background was where mum & dad spent 24 years together in retirement. Mum loved her garden so now looks over that and the Wolds nearby. Dad will be joining mum in the spring. The photo was taken after the funeral service and the flowers are the cross from dad’s coffin and another wreath from our cousins (whose mum’s and dad’s ashes are in the valley overlooking the railway and moors near Fylingdales).

As we said at the end of dad’s tribute:

…we join our cousins in becoming ‘orphans’, we also join them as living testimony to the care and love of our parents.

The fact that we hopefully are contributing in a positive way to our local community and society, being aware of social injustice & poverty, the needs of our neighbours near and far, means we will continue to be a tribute to them.

And that love and care will continue as our families grow from one generation to the next.

We all need to move on to the next stage in our lives, to let go of, but not forget the past.