I am here once again with sleep departing with thoughts of the Grave we left mum finally to rest at Kimberley Graveyard in Nottinghamshire.
The reason my sleep, or rather rest evades me is that the last 2 days since coming up with my own family so many conversations, decisions, following the guidance of Funeral Director Alan, the Revd David Stevenson, and the fact we had made the journey from Southampton.
40 days theory have now become fact. For these we were following the theoretical goal of ceremony and burial. It seemed everything was thrown at us in terms of barriers, conflicting advice.
Whilst we are in loss and sadness at the departure from this life, Joyce Emily, much has also been gained.
In life our mother for reasons we still have to discover suffered psychologically and in losing dad in 1990, these last 34 years have been lived in many ways within a framework of living but in limbo. I left the area then to live a new life in Brixham, took me time to recover the loss of dad. For those 34 years my brothers tried to live life without dad and having to readjust. I returned for 1 year in 1994.
I suppose for my part and for the time I spent in Portugal from 1995 to 2010, constructing my own family I had put my blood family in that box thinking that I would revisit from time to time.
My own mother in law’s passing in 2010 would be a catalyst for my return to the UK, and again in Brixham. Now through this loss of my own mother was a catalyst to a new readjustment.
For the 2nd time I was to take a major part in the funeral ceremony yesterday.
Greasley Church is a Mark in my own life, an idyllic setting set as a landmark in the many fields that separate Newthorpe Eastwood from Kimberley. My grandfather Harry Durose has spiritual connections there, ironic to want to connect the generations there. And as I spoke in that wonderful sanctuary to family and long-standing friends, many times fighting off the sadness of my loss to supply comfort to others’ loss. The ceremony music and items represent our dearly departed. Every temptation to polish her image resisted as she had a complicated life, a complicated way of living it. And yet we 3 brothers determined to honour her as a mother! That is gain above all the mixed memories we share.
I want to take this opportunity to thank Gillots and Alan Winfield in particular who in all of yesterday the sensitivity and professional attention and in no time was there any error in anything that was done from home to Church, Church to cemetery. He, also a Christian man, a man of God’s Word, shared in this process. Not forgetting also the Rev. David Stevenson who conducted the ceremony with Grace and giving us the framework to say goodbye to mum.
Now the real process of healing starts and lessons and renewed family ties be strengthened even more.
Grateful also to my own family who came this long journey to share in the pain also. May God recompense them also.
What I have personally learned is that sometimes with rejection and when family can be difficult arenas to navigate our hearts cannot allow self-protection to close off our minds to happy memories that do exist, yet we gravitate too much to the negative. May we truly in the year that Joyce Emily Durose died, see the Lord, embracing the pain of separation but knowing that God does heal and God does come to bring balance and richness to life if we let Him.
Rest in peace Joyce Emily!
Leave a Reply