At Home

Keeping purposefully busy here. Grandma's memorial service was held this morning. Just the six of us (as the wider family will be gathering this summer in Newfoundland, for the interment), and there was a priest on hand to say a few words. It was nice - but very sad.

This afternoon I helped my mother and aunt some more, going through my grandmother's personal things. By the end of the afternoon I had a little pile of things to take away with me. Some were gifts I have given to Grandma over the years - a thorn brooch from Glastonbury, a china dish from France, an early 18th-century Bible I found in a secondhand bookshop in Devon, a pair of leather gloves from Venice. Other things were her own possessions - her sewing box with embroidery silks, a copy of Tennyson, a pair of walking shoes she bought just a few months ago and hardly wore.

Late in the afternoon, my aunt handed me a folder full of papers and asked me to sort through them. They were copies of my grandmother's poems. I actually hadn't been aware that she wrote that much. Needless to say, they were hard to read. The most poignant is one she wrote in 2001, after her own mother died:

In a moment of stillness, she passed peacefully away
With contentment, for having lived to the fullness of her age,
She was prepared for the time when her mortal life would end,
And she wanted us to know, as she had said many times,
"I have been truly blessed, and now I have been fulfilled."

During the last days,
She recounted the lives of those she would leave behind,
Reaching back in her memory to find the pattern of events
Leading up to her present place in time, and she was satisfied
That indeed, she had done her best, and now all would be well.
There were no regrets.