Ascension

At the moment I am watching Enterprise with my youngest son. This was the show that Annie and I had begun to watch in 2009, little knowing that she would never have time to see it all. There is something bittersweet about watching those early episodes again, reminding me of this time of year, of today, October 13th 2009, when I received a fateful phone call while out at a client.

Grief is the price we pay for love, but all told, it is a price that I think is worth paying. Like C.S. Lewis and Joy Davidman, we only had a bare 5 years together, but that was a joyful time that I will never forget.

At All Souls day, at the end of the month, I shall be going to the annual church service at St Brelade's Church, where the names of the dead are read out, and where we can go forward and light a candle for them. At the end of that service, the empty tray of sand is full of candles shining brightly, each one an expression of love.

And I may well go tomorrow to the cliff top at Beauport, if it is not too windy, and recall how I went there with friends (and their dog Milly, now also dead), and we scattered her ashes so that the wind would take them out from the rocky cliffs and lift them high up over the sea. She ascended.

Ascension

It is that time again, the time of ending

The phone call on that fateful day

My beloved lost to me that way

Torn apart in death’s own rendering

Fate’s fabric torn, beyond all mending

Tears, heartbreak, and grief’s dismay

It is that time again, the time of ending

The phone call on that fateful day

  

Memories of such joy now attending

Life together, but love’s price to pay

Lighting a candle, I weep and pray

Ashes above cliff top, she is ascending

It is that time again, the time of ending