Losing our loved ones

My husband died in accident and emergency at a hospital a few miles away.

But he was in a cubicle so was

private. My friend and I sat with him for several hours afterwards  and then we decided to leave so I stood up walked to the curtain at the end of the cubicle. I pulled it back and there was someone who looked very like me. I thought it was on hallucination but it was my sister who had driven alone a very long way in a small car. So I told her what has happened and said we were going to the cafe

But she asked if she  could stay with him she wanted to say some prayers and I’m really sorry I didn’t stay with her because he had gone very pale and slightly shrunken and she had never seen anybody who had just died before.

It was so good having her with me for a few days.

When she died one year ago

I couldn’t even see her because it was too far away. But I was able to be in touch via messaging.

There are some advantages to modern technology and that is one. She told me that the pain was too bad and that she didn’t want to live any longer

I found that helpful and for some reason some passages from the Bible came into my mind such as

Now we see through a glass darkly but then we shall see face to face.

So I sent these to her and some poems I’d written

One of her sons read the poem she liked the best out to her the day before she died and, although she could not speak then, he said she smiled.

She was still practising Catholic unlike me and she was praying using her fingertips as beads so I had sent her some rosary beads and when she died she was holding them in her hands.

I knew she was going to die because I dreamt about her and she said that we were having a lovely holiday but she couldn’t stay with me any longer because the pain she had was too bad. She was wearing a beautiful embroidered dress unlike anything I ever seen which makes me puzzled about the unconscious mind. I come the unconscious mind create a beautiful dress that you have never seen in reality nor have you imagined it consciously in your mind

It’s so hard when someone so close to you dies. But like the fruit on the trees we will drop off and if we live a long and reasonably tolerable life it’s going to be sad for us and our friends and relatives

Joy and woe are woven fine

a clothing for the soul divine

William Blake