“We are  our stories. We tell them to stay alive or to keep alive those who only live now in the telling.” History of the Rain   Niall Williams.

Last Tuesday was my mother-in-law’s funeral. She was 89 at the time her death and died old and full of years. We miss her a very great deal. She cast a long shadow over the family. Mostly a benevolent one! I don’t believe in Resurrections. Nor in life after death. Nor in Heaven and Hell. She did and it gave her great comfort as was apparent in the funeral service she had carefully planned. She was Heaven bound with all that meant for her, including the possibility of a return to a new Earth in a new body in some future post Rapture state.

For those who are left, we are faced  with a gap. “Death”, wrote Stoppard, “is the absence of presence.” Her departure from our lives leaves a large absence. We visited her most weeks in her nursing home, never knowing quite how she would be. Sometimes very bright. Sometimes in bed, feeling sad. But always knowing us. Holding us in her mind. Probably in her prayers.  So how do we keep her alive in a way that doesn’t prevent her from being free? There is a myth, which I can’t locate, that says that the departed stay with us as long we need their memory. Not necessarily chained to us but still available when needed. A sort of spiritual Mary Poppins. When their memory is no longer needed then they are free to go home. On this basis Soz (my mother-in-law) will be around for some long time. There are children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren who will be shaped by Soz’s memory. Even if they are barely aware of her presence, she will shape their lives.

Freud, in his paper, Mourning and Melancholia, says, “The fact is, however, that when the work of mourning is completed, the ego becomes free and unfettered again.” I read this as an affirmation that I shall continue to be nourished by my memories of Soz. That I am made richer by her presence in my own psyche. Where she is a welcomed guest.

I shall greatly miss you, Soz. Rest well. You earned it.

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